Opinion Fun with Foursquare

By Katie Ainsworth

Foursquare launched in Vancouver this past September. After reading about its success in New York and LA, I immediately signed up to see what the fuss was about.

In case you haven’t unlocked your Newbie badge, Foursquare is a location-based social networking game. You earn points by checking in wherever you go. You can also give tips along your travels, read tips from others and, of course, locate your posse of friends.

As an early user in Vancouver, my posse consisted of two people. One of them was my partner at work— a guy I didn’t need technology to track since he sits right beside me.

Still, I burst out of the gates with great enthusiasm. I diligently checked in wherever I went, I added new places to the database, I earned badges, I collected mayor titles and, slowly, I made more friends.

Then I got bored

As games go, Foursquare is high on work and low on fun. So I created my own.

I discovered I didn’t have to be in the actual location to check in— a definite flaw in the game. Naturally I started checking in to tons of places I’ve never even seen, amassing major points. One guy actually refused to be friends with me because he heard I “cheated.”

I also became the mayor of the women’s washrooms at work. (A small but tasteful ceremony is currently in the planning stages.)

I even created a fictitious, Foursqure party girl: Katarina Ainswortovich. I checked her in to bars every night to earn the Bender and Crunked badges. Then I sent her to Fitness World every morning, desperately hung over, to earn the Gym Rat badge.

Clearly I wasn’t taking this seriously. But a lot of people are

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, the great social networking soothsayer, has called Foursquare the next Twitter. The most compelling reason being that Foursquare recently debuted an Application Programming Interface (API), allowing third-party developers to build anything they want on top of the existing Foursquare network.

Another believer is BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). They’ve partnered with Foursquare for three months— from November to January. Riders who check in can earn BART-themed badges and be selected to win one of several $25 promotional tickets.

A few savvy restaurants and clubs are also seeing the benefits of Foursquare, offering “mayor specials” that have patrons competing for more check-ins at their establishments.

Some of these places have been quite inventive. For example, if you visit the Princeton Club in New York often enough, you can unlock the Douchebag badge— which is seriously awesome.

And even I can’t deny the fact that Foursquare has capital with clout, including Union Square Ventures, one of Twitter’s major backers. Or the fact that they’ve already built a huge base of users in 100 cities around the world.

So I’m going to stick with it

It seems likely that over the next year, inventive developers will step in and make Foursquare more interesting and useful. Think about all the great external apps that have sprung up around Twitter.

Also, Foursquare is a natural tool for business. Restaurants and retailers are the destination. They’re an integral part of the experience. As more of them realize this, more people will be thinking about clever ways to attract check-ins.

In fact, it will be agencies like ours that will be charged with imagining the future of Foursquare for our clients.

And that really is fun.

Posted December 8, 2009 by Katie Ainsworth, partner and associate creative director at Rethink Communications in Vancouver.

What do you think about Foursquare? Are you loving it? Or loathing it? Do you find it better than Brightkite? How do you see it evolving over the next year? Leave us a comment.

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