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I don’t travel that much but this looks like so much fun.
Foursquare adds Menus to it's online Explore function
Starting today, you’ll be able to click through to menus on the right hand side of venue pages that have menu information. At a lot of these restaurants, we’ve also added a pricing icon to give you a quick sense of how fancy a night you’re in for.
Now that Facebook has finally turned on Timeline for everyone, here’s hoping that Foursquare also turns on it’s integration that I accidentally got a glimpse of back in October.
Say hi to foursquare Lists
This is pretty cool.
You have a list of the places you want to see this summer in New York. And the attractions you recommend to all your friends who visit Greece. And you’re slowly working your way down your friend’s list of restaurants with the best views in the world.
Good news: your list-making powers are about to grow to superhero levels.
Source: blog.foursquare.com
Five Steps to Fix Foursquare
Totally agree.
4) Involve the establishments. I have never had any establishment manager acknowledge I was in the house. You know, that might even be better than a prize. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a manager come up to you and say, “Mr. Schaefer, I saw you checked-in on Foursquare and I just wanted to thank you for visiting us today.” This is not happening. Why not? If the locations are not getting value out of the system the model is busted.
Source: businessesgrow.com
Foursquare’s Crowded UI
Everyone knows the iPhone’s screen has limited real estate. So the information you choose to present in this space is very important. With foursquare’s recent 3.0 update they’ve added some cool, new features. But they’ve also added some noise to the signal and it’s getting difficult to play the game as it was originally envisioned.
Let me first say that both Gowalla and foursquare have some massively talented designers on their staff. This is just a simple observation that I think could make a big difference.
Foursquare shows off new “Explore” features on their SXSW page
Foursquare tonight launched an addition to their SXSW page that shows off the power of their new Explore recommendations.
Gowalla’s Street Team
I finally got on Gowalla’s Street Team and I’ve been cleaning house. In the past week, I’ve spot fixed over 60 locations - including quite a lot in my neighborhood.
Just look how neat and organized it is now:
On the other hand, I’m starting to get a bit weary of Foursquare. While I still enjoy the service quite a lot, mostly because it rewards repeat venue check-ins and I’m a huge creature of habit, the venues themselves are getting really out of hand. They desperately need some cleaning and re-organization.
But if you happen to be out and about and see a spot on Gowalla that needs some loving care - flag it and I’ll take it from there.
OH! One more thing…check this out for a fun little teaser at something we’re working on for PBS: http://gowalla.com/pbs
The List of Unofficial Foursquare Badges
These are so funny!
Bo-Ring!: More than 75% of your check-ins are at venues with little or no relevance to your network – or anyone else. Tip: No one needs to know every time you pump gas at a Sunoco or pull into every train stop between Baltimore and DC.
El Bano: You’ve visited 20 different restrooms! Whatever you did in there, just tell us you washed your hands when you were done!
Home, Sweet Huh?: Congratulations! You’re mayor…of your house. Along with being king of your bird feeder and magistrate of your tool shed, you’ve really accomplished something. Celebrate by deleting your Foursquare account.
Check out the rest of them here.
via 4squareTips
The New Mayor of Eye Candy
Guess who just became the new mayor on foursquare of Eye Candy?
Foursquare and Voting
If you’re a foursquare user check out this website.
Foursquare’s checkin data offers a wealth of information about the places people visit and when. Data visualization agency JESS3 is looking to put that to good use on election day by visualizing the people who check in to polling places on foursquare. The data will be tracked anonymously and broken down by region and gender on a new site called “I Voted,” which will launch on November 2.There will also be an “I Voted” badge for checking in on foursquare and including #ivoted in your shout.
Source: aboutfoursquare.com
Hmmm…I wonder how the Government feels about people “checking in” to the Pentagon.
Foursquare’s Roadmap – Thoughts From an Introvert
‘About Foursquare‘ just published what they think is the roadmap of Foursquare, pieced together by comments from Foursquare’s CEO Dennis Crowley. Let’s go through a few, shall we?
The Bad:
iPhone App 2.0 w/improved tips and to-dos: The tips and todos are the main focus of the 2.0 release; they’ve undergone a major rework. We expect to see tips and todos made more prominent in the application, rather than tucked away under the third tab of the venue screen.
Tips and to-dos are probably the one thing I don’t really use much of in Foursquare. For me, it’s always been about the mayorships and competitive points system – which they’ve REALLY been down playing in the last several updates.
The tips are usually silly and not very useful (at least in my experience). Now, bringing them to the forefront of the app might make them more prevalent, but it still won’t make the actual tips any better. So in the future, seeing, “say hello to Betty the receptionist” will be right on my front screen. Yeah.
Facebook Places integration: Foursquare will clearly be integrating Facebook Places in some fashion in the next few weeks. Pushing foursquare checkins, badges and mayorships to the Facebook Places feed is an obvious first step. Pulling in your friends’ checkin data from Facebook Places could also be a possibility.
In another article I wrote (and TheNextWeb stole), I talked about how I really don’t want my 300+ friends on Facebook privy to all my mundane check-ins. That’s one reason I use Foursquare over Places when checking in to silly venus like the coffee shop. Its not something I want to subject all my friends to every time.
Points 2.0: It will be a total redesign of the “gameplay” experience that keeps users checking in. We expect it to be more about getting out, exploring your city and doing things that you normally wouldn’t do than the current points system which focuses mainly on checkins.
Ah! I don’t want to do ‘other’ things. I’m perfectly happy with my routine. Thank you very much!
NOW…the good points.
Photos: Gowalla users have been able to post photos along with their checkins for some time. It’s been one of foursquare’s most requested features, so they’ve pledged to implement them in the near future. You’ll be able to upload a photo to show off your favorite dish or something other users shouldn’t miss while they’re at the venue.
Kinda cool. Although, since I use Check.in I don’t really use the photos that often. But, if it’s available, I’d give it a shot.
How close you are to being mayor: The foursquare website makes it impossible to tell how many more checkins you need before you’ll become the mayor of a location. That’s why a host of third-party apps have popped up to make it easier to understand. In a recent Behind the Shell video with Carson Daly, CEO Dennis Crowley promised to make this a part of foursquare.
Very cool! I’ve often wondered about this and what obscure formula caused me to loose my mayorship.
There are some other features in the works as well such as rewarding more than one mayor and new updates for Android & Blackberry, but overall I’m not that excited about this new update. How about you?
Who wins the ‘Check-In Wars’?
People might disagree, but right now I think Check.in wins. Read on for my reasoning.
So far the new Facebook Places check-in is a one way street. You can check-in, but it doesn’t check-out. Basically, that means that if you use Facebook’s Places feature to check into your location, it doesn’t update your other location apps (Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp, etc.).
BUT, if you use a service like Check.in (ironically, from one of the only partners left out of the FB Places announcement - Brightkite), then you can update all your services at once (sans Yelp…for now).
An example using FB Places might go like this:
Walk into a restaurant and whip out the iPhone to use the FB app and check in. This updates my FB Places status on FB only. I’m then left with using all the other services individually to check into them because FB Places is a one-way street.
On the other hand, an example of using Check.in goes like this:
Walk into a restaurant and whip out the iPhone to use the Check.in web app. This updates my location apps: Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrrl, & now Facebook - all at once.
I’m not sure what this all means and Facebook might make some changes in the future. But, for now, I think it’s a bit short sighted on somebody’s part.
