Foursquare’s first radio plug didn’t come from us, but rather from Chris O’Leary - some guy that lives in the East Village, was ripping it up on foursquare/Seattle this weekend and ended up on this Seattle radio show. Ha!
FF’ed to 28:15 in (and the segment is a good 15 mins!)
Thx Chris!
Listen: http://ow.ly/iFWL
It reminded me of Paul Grahamâs quote that I love: “Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.” Foursquare is a great example of that quote in action. People care enough about…
The money quote in this piece (and thanks to whoever wrote this):
» Foursquare will soon be the default engine for connecting people to local businesses and to new and exciting things around them.
… copy and paste right into our Mission Statement, suckas!
My pal Stacey, in a random email to me about something totally unrelated.
This is one of the big differences I’m seeing in usage between foursquare and Loopt / Brightkite / dodgeball, etc. Even though the way we handle tips, etc. is a little wonky, it’s clear that a lot of people are starting to associate the “culture of foursquare” as being linked to the “go here and do this” idea we’ve been trying to curate with those tips.
Often when I see people checkin, my first though is to send them a quick SMS (“order to the snow peas appetizer!”) and when I check-in to places, I’m getting them from my friends as well (e.g. getting suggestions on what cheeses to try when I checked into Frankie’s). We’ve specifically built stuff like this into the app (you know, the tips that pop up) but users are doing it on their own, outside the app.
Not a huge point, but it’s different than what we’ve seen in that past with the other mobile / social plays - and we’re liking what we’re seeing.
(and yes, I barfed in my mouth a little when I typed the words “culture of foursquare” :)
Yeah that’s right. The “Mayor Meetup” was written up in the NYTimes…
The ‘Mayors’ of Manhattan Meet and Compete - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
I’ll tell you what, I wasn’t expecting much from the mayor meetup. I figured it would be 10 people max and mostly people I knew from the T&J crew. But when I got to the first stop at One and One, I found like 30 people who (a) I’ve never seen before and (b) who seem to didn’t know each other either… and that’s just awesome.
There were 6 stops throughout the night - One and One, DBA, Tom & Jerry’s, Scratcher, (Sake place on 7th?), SING SING KARAOKE (!!) - and we consistently seemed to have a crew about 30. (er, that’s 8 hours long!)
My favorite part: leaving Scratcher late, rolling into that sake bar and the place was just going bananas with shots and sushi and beers Kevin.K and the rest of the T&J’s crew all saw the checkins, came over to check it out and KK was all “We gotta get out of here - it’s too crazy”
Special shoutout to Conrad for pulling this off and thanks to everyone for coming out. Lemme know when the next one is - and happy to buy another round when we hit up a place where I’m mayor. :)
ps: Pics here and be sure to follow the @TownHoller crew on Twitter.
ps2: And I hear LA is next on the TownHoller world tour? Or is it SF?
Millarian | Using Foursquare to Discover Phoenix
This is what we were shooting for when we started. We still feel like we’re only 50% there, but psyched that people are already starting to get this experience from foursquare. :)
Special shoutout from iJustine for all the foursquare love! Thx!
Fred Wilson on foursquare. (and oh man, wait till he sees the “collect em all” take on places we’ve been talking about)
I definitely started getting sucked into the game, too. Getting badges and seeing where my friends were was fun. The other night, I realized that I was about to go to a place that Mike Galpert had been to about an hour or so before me, so I called him to ask what he had. Indeed, the spinach gnocci at Supper was excellent.
That’s when I realized how valuable Foursquare really is from a business perspective. Mike made a recommendation to me, but Foursquare was the service that actually knew that I went, because I checked in. Being able to connect web advertising, recommendations, and social media buzz to an actual person walking into your store has long been the holy grail of the advertising world. We spent lots of money and effort online to drum up our brand, but does it actually drive food traffic? Foursquare knows.
Charlie O’Donnell on foursquare and our opportunity to connect people with local businesses.
If Foursquare goes the way Crowley hopes it will (that is, if you all join), your everyday activities—from your commute to your grocery-shopping—would unlock what he calls “contextually relevant information”: tips, tricks and thoughts sourced directly from people you know. It would “make people more aware of the cities they live in,” and “motivate you to do things you wouldn’t normally do,” Crowley said. If Foursquare succeeds—if it’s adopted by enough people—it would fundamentally change the way many people interact with the city. It might well make today’s guidebooks, weekly event listings, and reviews look like the early versions of Mapquest by comparison.
“With Foursquare, Dennis Crowley Aims Past the Nerds” , NY Observer (July 10)
http://nyfi.observer.com/arts-culture/268/foursquare-dennis-crowley-aims-past-nerds
Not sure where the “nerds” part came from, but John Fischer manages to sum up foursquare better than we seem to do in our pitches. :)
