Foursquare (http://foursquare.com) is a social network with 1 000 000 users. You are probability thinking “Another one? I already have 2 or 3? What makes it different?”. Well, Foursquare is an application where you can be connected with your friends, know where your friends are now, find out the best restaurants near you by checking the tips posted, …
How it works? It’s simple, “Users share their location with friends by “checking in” via a smartphone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can connect their Foursquare accounts to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which can update when a check in is registered. By checking in a certain number of times, or in different locations, users can collect virtual badges. In addition, users who have checked in the most times at a certain venue will be crowned “Mayor” until someone surpasses their number. Various venues have embraced Foursquare, and offer special deals to users who are “mayors”. Foursquare has applications for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile” (Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/foursquare).
The possibilities to get advantage of Foursquare for business are huge. Imagine you have a clothes store or a restaurant, and from one moment to the other you just realize that some of your clients are recommending your store in a social network of 300000 users (and this number is growing up), you would love that costumers (and Foursquare!), they are advertising your company for free. What you could do to get advantage of this? For example giving a discount to Foursquare users, they would be happy and then post something nice about your store for 1 000 000 users and with luck you would have to open a new restaurant for the new clients. More people would join to Foursquare to get discounts everywhere and Foursquare would grow up exponential. As you can see Foursquare is adding value not only for their direct customers (Foursquare users) and that is maybe a big advantage over other social networks.
Big companies have already realized the value added by Foursquare, Finantial Times (http://www.ft.com/home/europe) for example is using Foursquare to get in contact with students from top business schools. “Foursquare users at the cafes in Cass, LSE, London Business School, Harvard and Columbia will be able to earn secret codes that will give them access to premium subscriptions for FT.com. More venues will be added as the campaign continues. For Foursquare, this is an opportunity to promote itself to a wealthy and entrepreneurially minded userbase, while the FT gets a very fashionable marketing campaign. "We're conscious we need to engage with readers in different ways," said Rob Grimshaw, the FT's head of digital operations.” (Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/apr/12/foursquare-ft).
“This new social broadcast application can help your business promote deals, get the attention of savvy early adopters of technology, or simply to increase foot traffic.” (Source: http://www.inc.com/guides/making-money-foursquare.html). “Foursquare has been cutting partnerships left and right. Some of these are for good causes, some are for potential business relationships, and some are just interesting” (Source: http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/foursquare-harvard/#ixzz0nvC4Plyh ).
Foursquare success is already making people wondering if Foursquare will become the next Twitter. Read more at http://mashable.com/2009/07/25/foursquare-app/ or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7hCMyUJmOE&feature=related.
To know more about Foursquare Business model check the blogs I follow. Below I have some links if you are interested to know in more detail how Foursquare works.
- http://foursquare.com/overview
- http://videos.edufire.com/2009/internet/foursquare-7-tips-on-how-to-use-foursquare/
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwM2sKX9Xok&feature=related
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment