Location-based services and solutions have been in the news since 2006, but just like any business, unless the idea can be monetized somehow, it won’t see the light of day. FourSquare was among the few instances of location-based applications that were embraced by both businesses and gamers in 2009, following the mainstream acceptance of Twitter. As introduced in last week’s post, FourSquare is a location-based mobile game allowing users to check into different venues and collect points for doing so.

Like any social game, the main feature of this application is knowledge sharing with your list of friends. Not only you can keep track of whereabouts of your friends, by knowing their exact location, but share tips and recommend venues based on your experience. For small businesses with limited budget for advertising, this high tech version of word-of-mouth can be significantly beneficial.

Using FourSquare not only enables you to keep track of the whereabouts of your friends, but also compete with them. Its simple yet functional interface allows the user to track their status in the scoreboard.

In addition, the application rewards the user by a variety of badges earned based on his/her usage behavior; these rewarded badges are then shared in form of Twitter status updates.  The user with the most number of check-ins at a specific location becomes the “Mayor” of that venue. The mayoral feature provides the businesses with a chance to encourage customers to visit them more often by offering specials or free items.

Other than the competitive game aspect, its user-friendly general interface, along with accurate locating capabilities, make FourSquare one of the top contenders when it comes to location based applications. A list of venues appears, recognizing the user’s closest geographical location, allowing the user to check in.  The application also encourages user feedback by rewarding them extra points for adding new venues.

Behind every successful service and/or product, there’s a visionary and a great team of people. FourSquare is the brainchild of Dennis Crowley and his new partner Naveen Selvadurai. Dennis Crowley has been involved in the location-based application since 2000 as one of the founders of Dodgeball, which was later, acquired by Google and replaced by Latitude.

In a nutshell, FourSquare allows you to explore different venues in your city, get tips and recommendations when visiting a new city, all while sharing this information with friends. Local and small businesses can harvest the power of social media and digital word-of-mouth, by offering specials and freebies to new and loyal costumers.

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Sanaz Jahanbakhsh

With a degree in Electronics Engineering from SFU, Sanaz Jahanbakhsh is passionate about the local high technology scene in Vancouver. To satisfy her creative side, she is freelancing as a technical writer and enjoys writing on a variety of topics from fashion to travel. Among her other passions are encouraging young women to explore careers in the technology sector.

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