The Scramble to Become Mayor! Information about Foursquare

Foursquare is a location based social media phone application and website where users can find friends, earn badges, and learn about the businesses and locations in the area. You can participate in Foursquare by downloading the free application on your smart phone, sending an SMS message to 50500, or using your computer’s web browser to access the website foursquare.com/mobile.

The core Foursquare demographics are young, urban, and tech-savvy however the demographic is constantly growing. Earlier this month Foursquare reached 7.5 million users up roughly 935% from March 2010.

Venues

A business participates in Foursquare by creating/claiming their venue. Visit Capture The Market’s venue here. Your venue is a place where you can provide your contact information, provide a Deal for the Mayor of your venue, add Tips. You can also link your Foursquare venue to your Facebook Business Page and/or your Twitter account.

Users
Users check-in to the various venues to earn badges, earn points, and become the Mayor of a location. A User’s smart phone uses GPS to provide a list of nearby locations to choose from. Users without a smart phone and send an SMS message to check-in to a location. Users can add Tips about the locations to recommend actions or offer opinions about the location to friends and other users or To-Dos or reminders for their next visit.

Future Events

Come August 1, 2011, v1 of the Foursquare API will be deactivated and replaced completely by v2. Though this is essentially on the developer side of things, you would benefit from verifying that on August 1 you are using the most updated version of your phone application. Learn more here.

Be sure to comment with any questions, or contact me at rachel@capturethemarket.com for a one sheet with more detailed information about Foursquare.