One of the three main topic areas of the Final BlogPotomac this October 23 is the evolving mobile web. I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing with Valeria Maltoni, and the uber hot GPS based social FourSquare came up. In my mind, FourSuare is the epitome of the future, mobile social web. From the interview:
[Four Square is] a location based social network that lets you tell your friends what restaurants, clubs and other sites you are visiting. Unlike its larger competitors BrightKite and Loopt, it seems to have caught fire here in the U.S. and is providing a Yelp-like referral to what the hot spots are.
Further, it recommends places based on which ones are most frequented. This is particularly helpful for travelers who are not in their native local network.
If I was a local business, I would see Four Square as the ideal type of mobile word of mouth. How can I get people to say they visited my place of business on Four Square? This is the Holy Grail of location-based mobile marketing, and creating applications and intelligent ways to get people to use their mobile phone in reference to your business while they are there is just smart marketing.
FourSquare is smart in that it not only lets people check in, but it also rewards them for frequenting certain places. Loyal customers feel a sense of pride at being dubbed the Mayor of their favorite restaurant or haunt. In fact, you often see people lauding their Mayoral status on Twitter or Facebook.
If you maintain a physical public place, it’s impossible to pay for this kind of mouth! But you can encourage it, say by providing free drinks or goods to your mayor.
Most importantly, from an adoption standpoint, FourSquare just released its Google Android app, and has Blackberry and Windows apps in development. Complimenting the iPhone app is smart, as it fosters interoperability between disparate operating systems and positions FourSquare to dominate the mobile location social network market. The company is also trialling in a few dozen cities, but is planning wider crowdsourced expansion in the near future.
It’ll be interesting to watch this hot mobile network as it develops. I’m looking forward to more mobile, local and social conversations at the Final BlogPotomac, too.
Here are some additional Tweets on FourSquare:
Geoff, funny timing, I just tweeted FourSquare about building in venue management tools into the service and charging for it…they responded this morning: “@mvermut Those “tools for venues” you tweeted about… we’re thinking the same thing :)” (http://twitter.com/foursquare/status/4054686300).
For me, it’s a much stickier experience than other LBS providers (Brightkite, Whrrl, Loopt, etc). Probably the gaming element and the easy find your friends interface.
The real business play is building up intention and interest data with respect to locations and enabling the types of marketing and outreach you touch upon. And they should integrate with a detailed reviews site.