PETER SHANKMAN
| POSTED ON January 21st, 2010 | 10 COMMENTS | + ADD YOUR COMMENT |
Spent the past four days in Vegas at Affiliate Summit – Much like Twitter was the big noise on everyone’s lips last year, this year was all about FourSquare.
If you haven’t gotten sucked into the black tar heroin that is FourSquare, it’s essentially a location based check-in service, where you compete to become “Mayor” of various locations around the world. You can enter new locations as you find them, and if played right, will be a goldmine for savvy companies who understand the value of immediate marketing.
Some of the key takeaways from the summit regarding FourSquare from my perspective:
People simply LOVE to announce where they are. Whether it was at the Rio Hotel, the Heart Bar or Las Vegas McCarran Airport, we couldn’t go five seconds without someone checking in somewhere. That signifies adoption: People were checking in to check in.
It’s actually useful. I found more than one party and event from seeing where other people were who were close to my location and simply joining them. That’s tremendously helpful, and signifies a reason to continue using FourSquare.
Finally, people love to make other people laugh, as exemplified by the multiple check-ins from Missy Ward’s Ample Cleavage. This shows that FourSquare is listening to their members. At one point, they didn’t allow random check-ins from non-recognized places. I, for one, did not check in anywhere close to Ms. Ward’s breasts.
Keep an eye on them. (FourSquare. Not Missy Ward’s breasts.) Keeping in mind this company was started by the same guys who built Dodgeball, I’m predicting FourSquare as the dominant mobile social app of 2010.
Thoughts? And feel free to add me as a friend on Foursquare here.
Tweet
|
FourSquare or GoWalla? cheers, Stefan |
|
I’ve been a fan of this FourSquare for a while now, if only for the simple thing that so many of my friends and acquaintances go to some really great places that I would never think to go without the app. From an immediate marketing standpoint, I think many of these companies that are already offering specials and services at a discount or as part of another promotion are going to get a huge value for their marketing dollar because the conversion is probably going to be huge….because, face it, people that are using FourSquare are already out, spending money or looking to have fun….so offering something immediately to people that are already out, is really a no brainer. |
|
It’s funny what social proof can do for a service – I joined FourSquare a while ago and never used it. But with all of the action on it during Affiliate Summit, I felt compelled to jump in on the action. |
|
I find it pretty neat, and look forward to seeing where this technology will head. Problem I see right now is like IM was a while back, where you have multiple ways to check into places. Foursquare, Gowalla, and now the 4.0 version of Yelp for the iPhone has a checkin feature. So each place I got I will have to check in with multiple apps? I guess someone will eventually come up with the Pidgin/Adium of location sharing apps, to check in through all of them at once. |
|
I absolutely love this tool! Especially because it’s not just ‘fun’, it fosters business relationships at a local level. What better way to make it all better than by “fighting” for mayorship and visiting and re-visiting local businesses?! It massages the ego, and helps the local economy. ;) |
|
Enjoyed reading this one.. tried the to add this website to google RSS reader but it didnt really work, any ideas? |
|
|
Sorry for the double post, but i\’m trying to read this blog through RSS and its not working – any ideas? |
PETER TO SPEAK
FOR THE NEWSLETTER
