Ever been sitting at your favorite coffee shop and think to yourself, “I must be their most loyal customer. I should get a free cup of joe once in a while”? Dennis Crowley, cofounder of Foursquare, is on a mission to make that happen. And, it turns out, he’s already accomplished so much that the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook are scrambling to catch up.
“We’re trying to build things for mobile phones that make cities easier to use and the world more fun to explore,” said Crowley in a July 13th conversation with founder and CEO of Adkeeper Scott Kurnit, offered free on FORA.tv.
On the simplest level, two-year-old Foursquare enables its users – more than 10 million of them – to locate themselves via GPS in a city or region and find friends, businesses and other landmarks around them.
The service then throws in equal measures mobile gaming and social media: Users “check in” to different places and share that information, along with reviews and tips, with friends. People who check in the most at a given business (say, their favorite coffee shop) become the “mayor” (hence the potential of a free cup of joe). There are hundreds of other badges to unlock, based on location-based accomplishments.
Today, many people use Foursquare as a way to “breadcrumb their experiences,” noted Crowley. They might track a trip through Europe or a day through their own town, and share this with friends. Others use it as a way to overlay game mechanics into everyday life (“I want to visit more museums this week than my friends”).
Importantly, when people check in to a business, that data can then be shared with the business’s owner. On Foursquare’s merchant platform, owners can see stats on their customers, and can even break them down by demographics: “It’s Google analytics but for brick-and-mortar businesses,” Crowley said, adding that this service is “free for now.”
The opportunities to monetize such a service are a no-brainer, but with Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus (already claiming a user base of 10 million) all racing to dominate location-based social media, does Foursquare stand a chance? Dennis Crowley isn’t a bit worried.
“I wrote the thesis in grad school. It’s like 100 hundred pages long and we’re only… 20 pages into it.” He doesn’t see Foursquare 18 months from now looking anything like the competition, and seems confident that his company will continue to define the cutting edge of geo-local media. “It’s all figured out. We just need to build it.”
So what’s next for Foursquare?
Dennis Crowley
One big idea, according to Crowley, is to turn the service into an all-purpose sharing bucket that would help bridge online and offline content.
The History Channel, for example, has started using Foursquare to collect and display moments in history. A user in New York City might turn on the History Channel filter to find that they’re standing in the building where New York’s first elevator was installed.
Further down the line, Crowley conjectured, you could be walking down Manhattan’s St. Mark’s Place and Foursquare would notify you that you’re passing a restaurant your friend recommends. Or you might be visiting Paris and Foursquare will create a multiday itinerary based on your previous check ins and those of your friends.
Enlightening or Orwellian? We’ll leave it to you to decide.