Entries Tagged 'Foursquare' ↓

TIME Magazine releases a list of the 50 best websites on an annual basis, which highlights the best websites in a variety of categories over the span of a year. There were five social media websites honored—most people would recognize the popular professional networking website LinkedIn as well as the micro-blogging service Tumblr.

However, there was a surprising snub in the geolocation list: Foursquare was left off, and Gowalla was honored instead.

Now don’t get me wrong: there are some people out there that would say that Gowalla deserved the honor. The issue at hand, according to Sarah Perez from ReadWriteWeb, was that Gowalla delayed the release of their Application Programming Interface (API), while Foursquare’s API has been available for months. According to Perez, waiting around could eventually be the downfall for Gowalla.

Avid geolocation platform users are likely a member of both Foursquare and Gowalla, but Gowalla has a smaller user base than Foursquare currently does. In your opinion, does Gowalla merit a “victory” over Foursquare in TIME’s 50 Best Websites of 2010? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Foursquare has unveiled a beautiful new advertisement in New York City’s Times Square that will reach thousands of people a day.

The ad is a huge, multi-level corner advertisement that will command the attention and the curiosity of passers-by—and it must be a dream for the geolocation platform to have such a huge presence.

According to TechCrunch, the ad space is owned by American Eagle, so it is likely that American Eagle contributed help to Foursquare in terms of affording the costs involved. That being said, it is an impressive presence for the most popular geolocation platform out there today.

The ad is placed above the American Eagle store location. Perhaps even more impressive is that the ad is the “largest digital billboard in Times Square”.

What are your thoughts on the Foursquare ad? What impact will the ad have on the service as a whole?

Geolocation Today continues a rundown of all of the Foursquare badges by covering the “Local” Badge.

How To Unlock It: Are you a big fan of local businesses? Well, in this case, you only have to be a fan of one venue. After checking into a venue three times in a week, you will receive the local badge, which rewards loyalty to a given venue.

Difficulty: Easy. You should have a favorite local hangout or venue that you visit often. Through three visits in a week (not all that hard to accomplish), you can pick up a badge that should be a part of everyone’s badge set.

Geolocation Today continues their look at how to unlock all of the badges on the platform. Today, we have a look at how to acquire the “Superstar” badge.

How To Unlock It: Users who have checked in to 50 different venues will receive this badge. Only the most dedicated Foursquare users will be able to unlock this one. Like the Adventurer badge, it takes vigilant checkins over an extended period of time to unlock the badge.

Difficulty: Moderate. While 50 checkins is by no means anything that can be accomplished in a day or even a week, dedicated Foursquare users are likely to have no issues picking this badge up over an extended period of time.

Unlock the Superstar badge, and many people will be able to see that you check in to Foursquare early and often without fail. If you want to friend request active users, look out for this badge in the profile to prove their constant checkin activity.

If you’re anything like me, I cannot turn down a good burrito for breakfast, lunch or dinner. While Chipotle may be the best known chains to get delicious burritos, you may also be familiar with a competitor, Qdoba.

The best part about Qdoba—at least for Foursquare users—is that you can get a free burrito if you are creative and good with words.

In order to qualify for a potential free burrito, you have to check in to any participating Qdoba location. Then, use the Foursquare “Shout” function to “shout about how you beat burrito boredom”. The best and most creative answers from users will result in a free burrito for each shout.

So what are you waiting for? If you want to get in on the competition, check out Qdoba’s store locator and visit your closest store location to check in and shout.

Do you plan on giving the free burrito shout a try? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Geolocation Today continues their reports on how to unlock all of the Foursquare badges on the platform.

The “Explorer” badge should be a straightforward badge pickup for users who have remained active on Foursquare.

How To Unlock It: 25 different location checkins will earn the user this badge.

Difficulty: Easy. Even Foursquare users in the smallest U.S. cities should have no problem checking into 25 different venues if they are vigilant with their checkins.

Conclusion: It’s highly likely that this will be the third badge that users pick up. Explorers are emerging Foursquare users and are more than worth following and/or friend requesting.

Just a few days ago, Geolocation Today covered the University of Michigan athletics program and their Foursquare use. Now, it looks like the Atlantic Coast Conference has also gotten active on the platform.

SB Nation released a report tonight that showed the total number of ACC checkins to their football stadiums. The two Florida ACC teams, Florida State and Miami, took the top spots. The state of North Carolina also had an impressive showing, with NC State and UNC both in the top five.

Impressively, the ACC recorded more total Foursquare checkins than the SEC, and that excludes Wake Forest’s football stadium.

Expect to see more reports on Foursquare use in college football stadiums this year. Geolocation websites and platforms tend to be popular amongst a younger demographic, and college students are no exception.

How do you think geolocation websites will affect college athletics?

Foursquare recently made some changes to their privacy settings that users should make a note of. In this post, I will outline the three major changes as well and provide some background into how these changes will affect you, the Foursquare user.

1. Email and Phone Number information now can be hidden.

This one is pretty straightforward, but in the event you do not want to share your email or your phone number, you can choose to hide it from the public’s eye. While email addresses tend to be easy to pass along and find, a phone number tends to be much more private. With the option to withhold your phone number(s), users may be more inclined to use the service.

2. You can now hide your mayorships.

Yes…mayorships are supposed to be a reward on Foursquare, but are they an award in real life? Your list of mayorships shows people where you have checked in the most: and that could be a potential security issue.

Foursquare was smart to incorporate this as a setting as it could actually increase the  number of checkins on their service. Places where people felt uncomfortable checking into before are now places where people will check in.

3. Extended control over email settings.

As if your inbox wasn’t already cluttered enough: Foursquare friend requests and confirmations can take up a lot of email space. Foursquare has planned to expand the users’ control over email settings: just how they will do so is unknown at this time.

What are your thoughts on Foursquare’s latest privacy setting adjustments? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

If you are an active user of Foursquare and keep track of your mayorships, you know how competitive mayorships can get. Every day, it seems that hundreds of new mayors are crowned, and likewise, many are ousted as well.

Looking to gain a few mayorships for your Foursquare profile? An application, released yesterday to the Apple iTunes Store, may be just what you need. Mayorama, created by Daniel Luxemburg, is an application that many serious Foursquare users may want to consider downloading.

The main idea for the application is simple. Through collecting your Foursquare data and your current location, the application is able to show you a list of nearby locations and how many checkins it would require to earn the mayorship. In addition to this important information, it also shows you the distance away from the locations, how many users are currently at those locations and whether or not there is a special for the mayor.

The bad news comes for the Android users: At this point in time, the application is only available in the Apple iTunes Store. That being said, the iTunes Store application description hints that future phone operating systems may be supported.

The idea behind the number of required checkins to become a mayor is nothing new: websites like WhenWillIBeMayor.com offer users a list of the same information in this app, minus the current location data. But how will knowing potentially available mayorships around your location change your checkin habits?

Do you plan on giving the Mayorama application a shot?

There were several times this weekend when I tried to log into Foursquare to check in, but was unable to do so. Needless to say, I was upset.

Martin Bryant posted an interesting opinion piece this morning about this very topic. Foursquare downtime does matter to people, and from the reaction of the service being down, it solidifies the fact that many people are relying on the service.

It is an interesting stance to take, but it does have some truth to it. How many people complain when Twitter is down, or when Facebook is not working as well as it should? Foursquare should probably be more worried if people didn’t care that their service was experiencing downtime. But it is a solid sign that people do care when the service is down.

Another interesting way to look at it is whether people would really care if a geolocation competitor was down. Gowalla? Loopt? Those services have yet to reach the overall success that Foursquare has experienced, and therefore, it would be much less likely that people would care when the service experienced downtime.

Is it fair to tie people complaining about downtime in with the popularity of a service? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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