foursquare: open your city!

In childhood, almost every one of us went to the yard to play with the children: war games, catch-ups, Cossacks-robbers, or at least daughter-mothers.

And so we grew up, and the playgrounds expanded to the size of the whole city or the whole world. But what about those who do not have enough time and energy to play “Patrols”, “Fight” and other role-playing games? That's right: turn your everyday cultural life into a game: visiting cafes, clubs, bars and museums.

It was from this idea that the New York creators of foursquare, a service that the very same people who in 2006 began to master Twitter, such as Skobel , were fond of were repelled. The idea is not much more complicated than on Twitter: instead of answering the question “What are you doing?” To write, where you are and what's so interesting. But maybe it is she who, on top of the urban environment, will create a network of links and tips that allow you to better navigate in the cities and spend your time.

Foursquare customers exist for iPhone, Android and ordinary mobile browsers (and in America there is a “short number” for sms!).

They allow you to search for nearby institutions of the most different directions and "fit" into them. If there is no place in the database, it is easy to add it by specifying the address, and if you are there more often than others, you become its Mayor (the service creators actively work with the owners of the establishments to give Mayors discounts and free treats).
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Visiting a place, you can leave a comment to it, advice to those who are only thinking about how to go there. This can be either a general review or a specific recommendation - the most delicious dish on the menu or an ongoing exhibition.

As in any social service, there is a mechanism for franding - at the same time, for example, iPhones receive push notifications about where your friends went - and you can immediately catch up with them. For friends who have lagged behind the progress for a couple of years, all the activity can be broadcast to Twitter. In addition, there are peculiar "goodies" - badges that can be obtained by visiting a certain number of places, spending a very active evening, or visiting a couple of karaoke bars (the Wannabe badge).


Unfortunately, while foursquare does not work around the world, but only in certain cities (the list is constantly growing, a lot of American and major European ones are already). Since I was impatient to try the service in St. Petersburg, I chose Helsinki and began to “fit in” to St. Petersburg places where I am (fortunately, when adding an institution, you can also specify the city). The creators of the service promise in the future to abandon the division of the world into cities and make foursquare accessible everywhere (for now the main problem is to gain a base of suitable places, which I am gradually promoting in St. Petersburg).

During a recent trip to the UK, I tried to use foursquare in London and Edinburgh, there the density of places is simply off scale, and even metro stations are marked. But still it was not possible to develop the habit of being marked everywhere (although one dude suggested installing RFID readers in institutions and “fitting in” with the help of the metro), and the service brought little benefit - it is much more interesting to be a pioneer and mark out the city for itself. So, if you are interested, register on foursquare.com, download their applications (or master the mobile web interface), choose Helsinki (or whatever city is closer to Moscow, payalnik chose San Francisco), and let's roam our cities together !

With monetization (unlike Twitter), everything is also more or less clear: having studied the routes and habits of users, one can show them advertisements of establishments that will definitely come along the way and to their liking. And they attracted pepsi as a sponsor of the leaderboard in New York (and they also said that pepsi tied up with advertising ...)

Of the competitors answering the question “where are my friends” can be called Google Latitude and brightkite. But foursquare liked the fact that you can decide for yourself what places to fit in, and the authors managed to find a form resembling a big quest or role-playing game, and at the same time not too intrusive. Perhaps we will take this niche mobile application "Posters" , if the developers add social functions there. Or maybe they will just use the foursquare API and will interact with the ready-made platform.

In any case, geo-location games and localized metadata are what will allow us to entangle our planet with the web of a new generation even more densely! Service is developing all the time, many things developers come up with on the go - and it is very interesting to join this wave until it becomes mainstream like this on your Twitter.

PS I was going to tell about this thing for a long time, but forced myself only after the announcement of the contest “Internet stuff. So, if I liked everything, I ask you to support me when they start the voting. Thank!