Foursquare: Social Way of Locating Venues

In an era when location-based social networking is gaining popularity, Foursquare has joined in the fad by creating its own website that would cater to smartphone users. Nearby venues can be located through text messaging, the website or through a device-specific app. The app provides a GPS hardware installed in a mobile device provides ease of locating venues. Points and badges are given to users each time they log in.

Foursquare was founded by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai in 2009. While Crowley was in the New York University for the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), he proposed a similar project for his thesis called the Dodgeball. In 2005, Google acquired the rights for Dodgeball but Google eventually shut the operations of Dodgeball down in 2009 in favor of Google Latitude.

Crowley replicated the idea of Dodgeball in Foursquare where users can interact with their environment using a mobile device. By the end of April 2012, Foursquare’s records show that it had 20 million users worldwide. At that time, Foursquare’s target is to reach 750 million check-ins by June 2012. The figure will represent equal check-ins by both male and female users and that half of these check-ins will come from users outside US. In February 2011, Foursquare added supports for Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, and French users. Supports for Thai, Korean, Indonesia, Russian and Portuguese customers were added in September 2011. Turkish support was added in June 2012.

Foursquare allows its users to post their locations in a given venue (called Check-in) and then connect with peers and friends. Other check-ins can be done on Twitter and Facebook. Each check-in requires selection. Points are awarded at each check-in. Badges are given based on tagged locations, frequency of check-ins and other predetermined patterns such as time of check-in.

The app also features other useful functions such as “To Do” list, tips at the venue, history page of check-ins with breakdowns according to months and years, and a sidebar that allows check-ins to be categorized.