foursquare

James Bond was here

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:30:11 -0400

Filming locations in venues all over the world. Lists of locations for particular movies including stills, tips and check-ins.

Wondering where all your favorite scenes from the 007 movies took place, in the real world? Filmsquare finds them and drops Foursquare tips, complete with photos. (And not only Bond films, others, too…)

Look how Mayor @BobBuckhorn is using Foursquare data to improve life in Tampa Bay!

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:18:47 -0400

Look how Mayor @BobBuckhorn is using Foursquare data to improve life in Tampa Bay! :

Mayor Bob Buckhorn: Using Foursquare as opposed to just anecdotal evidence really gave us a pretty cool insight to where folks are to help us plan the hot spots, the hip spots. [Program partner] Carnegie Melon approached Tampa wanting to do this as part of a project they were already working on.

Unlock badges without checking in

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:26:47 -0400

We love when people tweet about dragging themselves to the gym to earn the Gym Rat badge, or about trying a new restaurant hoping to unlock the Pizzaiolo badge. Encouraging real-world actions is a big part of the mission behind foursquare. We’re also aware that some of those behaviors don’t necessarily involve a check-in, which is why today we’re excited to introduce the first badge you unlock by doing something, not just checking in. Say hello to our first badge partner: a little company called RunKeeper.

Here’s how it’ll work: users of RunKeeper, an application that helps you track your fitness routines, can now earn RunKeeper-exclusive badges on foursquare by achieving different milestones within their app. For instance, if you run a marathon using RunKeeper, you’ll unlock their Marathon badge. Once you unlock a badge, it will show up on both your RunKeeper profile and with your other badges in foursquare.

We’ve long been fans of what Michael, Jason, and the rest of the RunKeeper team are doing to innovate in the fitness space and feel strongly that they’re driven by the same ethos that motivates foursquare: leveraging technology to help people live better, healthier, and more fulfilling lives.

To continue promoting this behavior, we’re going to develop more of these badges unlocked by real-world experiences with a handful of carefully selected partners, a few more of which will be announced soon.

If you’ve got a cool idea about using your app for a third-party badge, let us know. We look forward to the day when looking at your foursquare badges reminds you of all your proudest life accomplishments. So get off your computer and get running!

Make personal finance social with AmEx + foursquare

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:20:34 -0400

Check out what our friends at American Express are doing with the foursquare API in their new app, Social Currency. Now, when you let your foursquare friends know where you are, you can also tell them what you’re buying and what you’re saving up for. Check in at a restaurant and share the great deal you just got on the best pizza in town. Or check in at a store and upload a photo of the shoes you’ve been eyeing for months.

You can find more info on Social Currency (and tips on how to manage your money) on AmEx’s site, Currency. To see more cool uses of the foursquare API, check out our App Gallery.

Introducing foursquare 2.0: Tips + To-Dos + Add to foursquare + More!

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:59:00 -0400

UPDATE: ~~Whoa guys! Servers are melting from all the excitement. We’ll be rolling out the new 2.0 features over the coming days.~~ All clear! Enjoy foursquare 2.0!

When we started foursquare, we dreamed it would be much more than check-ins. We really wanted to build tools that would help people collect and share their real-world experiences. Today we’re rolling out the 2.0 version of our iPhone app as well as a new way to connect it to the web. We’ve been working on these updates for a while, and feel like they’re a big step towards our original idea. Here are the three things you’ll probably notice:

1. We split up Tips and To-Dos.
When you open foursquare (iPhone update is live today; changes to Android and Blackberry coming soon!), you’ll notice separate sections for both Tips and To-Dos. Our thinking is that by making it easier to access your To-Do list, foursquare will be better at helping you remember all the interesting things you want to experience nearby. We’re already finding that this simple change turns foursquare into more than than just a tool for keeping track of where you’ve been, but into something that keeps track of all the places you want to go and the things you want to experience.

2. We sprinkled our new Tips and To-Dos throughout the app.
Since having them in your navigation bar wasn’t enough, you’ll see touches of Tips and To-Dos throughout the app. Next time you spot a brand new cupcake shop (like Butter Lane in NYC), fire up foursquare, and with one tap, add it to your To-Do list for later. You’ll also see your friends’ tips highlighted on the venue view in the app.

Once something is added to your To-Do List, you’ll see a blue ‘dog ear’ for that place whenever it pops up in your nearby places list. And the next time you check in at Butter Lane, you will get a reminder of any of the To-Dos you’ve saved for that venue. (“Order anything with the raspberry buttercream. It will change your life.”) We even put a handy counter on each tip, so you can see how popular they are with other foursquare users. Put together, we’ve found these new tools super helpful when you’re out exploring the world.

3. Real-world discovery also happens online.
Say hello to the ‘Add to My foursquare’ button. You don’t always learn about new places from your friends, you may have read a review of someplace in the paper. Since there hasn’t been a good way of remembering a review when you’re nearby, we’ve rolled out a new embeddable ‘Add to My foursquare’ button, which connects what you find on the web with your foursquare To-Do List. Read the review, click on the button, and that tip about tasty cupcakes is now on your phone. It’s like Instapaper, but for things to experience in the real world.

The teams at Eater and Racked have already put ‘Add to My foursquare’ buttons on all their place pages, like this one for Momofuku Ssäm Bar. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Zagat, Time Out Chicago, Time Out New York, National Post, and New York magazine will be implementing it in the coming days.

If you have a website, this is as easy as embedding a YouTube video. Just find the tip or venue you want to use (or write your own tip), click the embed button, and paste the embed code on your page. See a bit more info about them here.

We hope you enjoy all this. We’ve got more things coming soon, so stay tuned.

-Team foursquare

P.S. Developers, we didn’t forget about you. All these new features are included in the API so feel free to start playing around!

Explore your campus with foursquare!

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:27:00 -0400

A few months ago, we put a call out for college students who wanted to represent foursquare on campus and the response was astounding. So today, with everyone settled in on campus, we’re happy to announce official partnerships with over 20 universities, student ambassadors in several dozen others, and we’re adding more every day.

With foursquare, universities can help students explore their campus by sharing school traditions, information about classes and building hours, and insider tips. Students can now unlock new badges from an exclusive campus badge pack, rewarding them for their late nights at the library and attendance at sports games. Now, not just seniors will know about campus shortcuts, dining hall secrets, and the can’t-miss campus events.

If you’re interested in joining our program and would like to see how some of our university partners are using foursquare on campus, please visit us at www.foursquare.com/universities

Have fun showing your school pride with foursquare!

Foursquare does Times Square. Thanks, American Eagle. P.S. They...

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 12:59:33 -0400

Foursquare does Times Square. Thanks, American Eagle.

P.S. They are still running specials for checking in on foursquare!

Am I mayor yet?

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:56:00 -0400

We made a quick yet long-awaited tweak to our apps today. When you’re getting close to winning a Mayorship (within 10 check-ins), you’ll now see how far away you are from ousting the current Mayor. You’ll see the count in the post check-in screen when you check into a place. Take it for a test drive tonight and see if it fires up the flames of competitiveness for you!

Just a quick reminder of how Mayorships work: To become Mayor of a place, you need to have checked in more days than anyone else over the last two months (60 days), so only one check-in per day counts. Oh, you also need to have uploaded a profile photo from your settings page (no one wants a faceless dictatorship!). And yes, we also made changes that prevent registered “Managers” and “Employees” from becoming Mayors of their own venues.

We have lots and lots in the queue, so you’ll be hearing more from us shortly!

-Team foursquare

dpstyles: Found on Flickr… 4^2 stickers everywhere (by...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:52:59 -0400

dpstyles:

Found on Flickr…

4^2 stickers everywhere (by Darshy)

» I found this “foursquare check-in here” sticker at one of my fave vintage shop [blacklist] in Minneapolis. Reminds me a lot like “they love us on yelp” sticker, but way cooler Minneapolis <3 foursquare!

Changes to our authentication system

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:50:44 -0400

Some of you may have seen a blog post about our authentication system that went up earlier today. Since foursquare launched last year, we’ve been using HTTP Basic Auth, a common authentication mechanism. We’re currently in the final stages of integrating a new authentication system (HTTPS), and you’ll be seeing this roll out in the iPhone client next week, and our BlackBerry and Android clients shortly after that. Additionally, we’ll be using OAuth2/HTTPS as the standard for the new API we’ll be releasing in the coming weeks.

As always, we encourage you to email us with any concerns about data security.

- team foursquare

New iPhone app from Zagat features foursquare tips and check-in...

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:17:00 -0400

New iPhone app from Zagat features foursquare tips and check-in functionality. Yum!

Some notes on foursquare and location sharing

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:55:00 -0400

We’re always looking for ways to give our users more control over the data they share through foursquare. We’ve been thinking about how to improve the User Settings page for a while, so we’ve made some changes to the controls you can use to adjust the way you share information with foursquare. For example, you can now choose to share your email or phone number with friends, opt out of all Mayorships, and have more control over email settings. We invite you to check out your updated settings page to review some of the tweaks we’ve made.

It seems that a lot of concerns over information sharing on location-based services arise from confusion over what is shared and where it’s shared, so we’ve put together an explanation of the different ways foursquare uses and shares location information. You can see this overview here: http://foursquare.com/privacy

We’ve also put together a detailed grid that shows exactly which information is public vs. private and what options foursquare gives you to control the way you share your information. You can view this grid here: http://foursquare.com/privacy/grid

We encourage anyone who uses location-based services and social networking sites to educate themselves about how their information is shared and to familiarize themselves with the user settings available on each site. In addition to the links above, you may also want to review our formal Privacy Policy and the Privacy FAQs on our support site.

And, of course, we’d love to hear your feedback on these changes. Let us know your thoughts in the comments or via email. Thanks!

- team foursquare

(via marsbot)

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:39:53 -0400

(via marsbot)

Superfans and superusers: show your foursquare pride with swag

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:07:00 -0400

So many of you have been asking how you can rock the t-shirts we wear every day here at foursquare HQ, so we made a store for you to get your own! The great thing about this is that it’s really not just a store, but a distribution channel that will allow us get swag out to all our biggest supporters and loyal superusers (love you guys!).

In the future, we hope the store will make it possible for us to do a lot of really cool things—like tying badge unlocks to real-life swag—so you can show off your foursquare accomplishments! Check out the cool voting feature where you can pick which one of our designer Mari’s awesome designs makes it into the store next.

Big thanks to the great people at Sigler out in Ames, Iowa for building the foursquare store! We had thought about creating merchandise for our users, and when we saw that the folks at Sigler had created a foursquare special for their headquarters, we had to give them a call. They’re so into foursquare, they even sent us a photo of the day they had a company-wide swarm!

Happy swagging,

team foursquare

Settings update: Name your hometown!

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 12:06:00 -0400

We rolled out a new feature that now allows you to name your hometown on your public-facing profile page, so you can show your hometown pride and help friends find you via search! This can be helpful if you have a common name (e.g. Jane Smith) and friends searching for you may find more than one result for your name.

When we made this feature live on Friday, your hometown was automatically set as the city where you last checked in on Thursday, so if you want to correct it or update it at any time, go to your settings page and click the blue “edit” link next to Account Info on the right. If you’d prefer not to have a hometown associated with your account, feel free to edit this field and leave it blank.

So, make sure to update your hometown (see the above screenshot) to your desired location. When foursquare friends look at your profile page on the web, they will see your hometown listed below your name plus a feed of your recent public check-ins (as always). Based on the example above, Jimmy Foursquare will show as being in New York, NY in the public search, although his last check-in was in Medway, MA (only his friends will see that he checked in there).

A note to superusers: you can still change your “currently in” location as you have in the past to see merge queues for other cities (circled, above). This is distinct from your hometown, as hometown ONLY changes based on your edit of account settings from foursquare.com/settings.

You’ve got a lot of questions about foursquare, it seems....

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:21:18 -0400

You’ve got a lot of questions about foursquare, it seems. Well, now we’ve got more answers for you. Today we launched a new foursquare FAQ section of our site, and the best part is that it’s searchable. You can search by keyword or phrase (think: “photo” or “How do I link to Facebook?”).

You’ll find frequently asked questions about every part of foursquare, including a whole section about foursquare for businesses. If you’ve created a ticket or asked a question from your mobile phone, you’ll now immediately get a response with suggested solutions to what you’re asking about. As people read our help articles, the popular ones will display more prominently. So the more you use the site and vote up articles, the more you’ll help each other get good answers.

Some sections of our new support site you may want to check out: Foursquare for Android, Foursquare for BlackBerry, Foursquare for iPhone, and General Account Help.

For our long-time users, you may be wondering how this fits in with our community forums on Get Satisfaction. If you’re looking for an official answer about foursquare, you should look at the new support center. If you want to talk to other foursquare users, Get Satisfaction is your place (a lot of superusers help each other out over there).

These changes will make our help and support more efficient and more effective. We’ll continually be updating these articles and adding to the forums. We’d love to hear from you in the comments about what you find helpful and what you’d like to see us build into this support site as we improve it. There’s lots more to come for users!

Love this super hot commercial from our friends at VH1. The spot...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:24:56 -0400

Love this super hot commercial from our friends at VH1. The spot will be airing ALL summer (and then some). “Unlock it to rock it” - the lucky winner gets unlimited free access pass to any live show (hint: Live Nation participating venues) venue of his choice for a year! (via tristanwalker)

The loyalty program system within foursquare continues to evolve...

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:06:00 -0400

Foursquare was created to motivate people to discover interesting things around them. As the platform has evolved, we’ve started to experiment with many different ways to encourage users to explore, from surfacing great tips that come from the friends you trust to rewarding users who frequent the gym or commute via public transit. Thousands of merchants, too, are actively claiming their venues in the system and providing additional incentives on the platform in the form of Special offers and Mayor Offers. Some of these are sole proprietors such as the Mermaid Inn in our hometown of New York City, while others are nationwide initiatives from the likes of Starbucks, Sports Authority, Ben & Jerrys, and Whole Foods.

We continue to be inspired and excited as we observe merchants leveraging the platform to engender customer loyalty, drive foot traffic and boost customer acquisition.

Some examples:

+ Starbucks: Starbucks offered $1 off any size Frappuccino® for its mayors. Since running their Mayor Special on foursquare, Starbucks (already the most checked in retailer on the platform prior to running the Special) has seen a 50% increase in Check-Ins at its locations. Also, not only are our users excited about the competition the mayor deal creates but they’re also welcoming the opportunity to try new products!

+ our friends at Monique’s Chocolates in Palo Alto have acquired over 50 new customers and saw well over 100 redemptions as a result of running a Special Offer over the past seven weeks:

The owner of Monique’s, Mark, also told us that he is running the same Special in his local newspaper (cost of ad = $300!) and has acquired only one customer with one redemption from that print ad. He adds that for those who redeem the Special via foursquare “more than 25% return regularly to get something, to Check in, to see who the mayor is…the gaming part of foursquare really does resonante with people and we’re excited about it!”

+ AJ Bombers, a local burger spot in Milwaukee has seen a 30% increase in menu item purchases from running both a Special (free cookie if you add a tip!) and mayor offer (free burger!)

Joe, the owner, has leveraged foursquare in other innovative ways to drive foot traffic - he was the first to hold “Swarm Badge” and “I’m on a boat” parties for customers!

We LOVE stories like these. We’re deeply motivated to build the best tools to help our merchants use foursquare to get their customers excited about frequenting their venues, while offering sweet deals for our users.

We are taking what we’ve learned so far from these early experiments and introducing a few changes today to make the experience better for users and merchants.

Loyalty offer variability (“Specials Nearby”):
Starting today, users will no longer see the same loyalty offer (Special offer or Mayor offer) over and over but rather see some variability by seeing rotating offers in the “Special Nearby” tab.

The “reach” for Special Offers:
The current location range for offers “nearby” is approximately 200 yards, but will, in the future, be variable based on the user’s location. In more densely populated areas, 200 yards will provide adequate variability. In areas outside of cities, we’re going to increase that range to provide better results for users in less densely populated areas.

Participation from employees:
Thousands of merchants are running Specials on the platform and the majority of Specials in the system are frequency-based (i.e. “every 5th Checkin Special gets you a free appetizer!”). There are also merchants, like Sports Authority, who are running mayor deals. In the past, we’ve not allowed users identified in our system as employees or managers of venues (see staff tool below) to be eligible for mayorships or participate in Foursquare mayor offers.

This restriction remains true, but we are going to make the process of designating employees as staff on foursquare venues much clearer to merchants. We can’t expect all merchants to require employees to mark themselves as such but we can do better (and we will!) as it relates to communicating to our merchants about the benefits of doing so.

Redemption:
User experience is paramount to anything that happens within the Foursquare universe. These early experiments are helping us make a better product and ensure that future offers are as easy to redeem as ever. While the ultimate responsibility rests with the merchant, we want to make sure they have the tools and documentation necessary to teach everyone involved about our programs. As technology advances and Point of Sale systems get smarter, this responsibility can move from humans to barcode scans, loyalty card integrations and other means, thus reducing the potential friction.

As always, we thank you all for the feedback! We will continue to work to build the best product possible for our users and merchants and we welcome the feedback as we continue to iterate the platform based on these early experiments.

— foursquare biz dev team —

We wanted to update you on recent improvements we’ve made to the controls that help users...

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:39:34 -0400

We wanted to update you on recent improvements we’ve made to the controls that help users manage what foursquare account information is shared with others. Our goal is to make it easy for you to share check-ins with your friends when you so desire, and to hide such information when you want. Accordingly, each time you check into a venue, we give you the option to share your check-in with friends (or keep it private), and share this information with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter if you’ve opted into linking these accounts to your foursquare account.

On the “Settings” page for your account (which can be accessed at http://foursquare.com/settings), we give you even more options for controlling your data — we give you the option to share your phone number and email address with friends, the option to let local business owners see that you’ve checked into their venue, and the option to allow other users see when you’re checked into a venue (in the “Who’s Here” list for that venue in the foursquare mobile application). You can opt in, or opt out, of any of these settings.

A little over a week ago (on Monday the 21st), our developers were alerted to a problem that enabled sophisticated users, by continuously scraping venue pages from our website through anonymous gateways, to capture private check-in information that users didn’t intend to share with the general public. Three days later, our team began rolling out a number of solutions to this problem. First, we ensured that any user that had opted out of appearing in the “Who’s Here” lists no longer appeared in the “Who’s Been Here” photo mosaics on our site (this fix went live last Thursday). Second, we updated the language on our “Settings” page to clarify what opting into the “Who’s Here” feature entails. Third, we randomized the order of the photos being posted under the ”Who’s Been Here” headings on our venue pages to prevent anyone from scraping this data to try to estimate check-in times of various users.

So that’s the techie detail. What does it mean in plain English? There was a glitch in our service that allowed sophisticated developers to glean some user check-in info, and we fixed it. We will continue to do all we can to improve user controls over information sharing as we grow our team and our user base.

We’re very sorry if information that users didn’t intend to share was temporarily made public on our venue pages or through our API. Please bear with us… we’re continually looking for ways to improve the sharing options that we provide to our users, and we’re intent on further improving tools and communication in this area. We encourage all of our users to check their privacy settings regularly to ensure that they’re comfortable with the amount of information that they’re sharing.
- team foursquare

We're just getting started...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:02:00 -0400

Hey all -

It’s been quite the year for foursquare. Last year at this time, Naveen and I - tired of working around my kitchen table - borrowed a desk from our friends at Curbed.com and Hard Candy Shell. Two months later we brought on our first hire (Harry!) and a few weeks after closed on our first round of financing: $1.35m from Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and a handful of angels. Back then, our office looked like this.

Fast forward a year: We’re now 27 people strong. We can’t fit any more desks or chairs in our office so we’re borrowing cubes from our neighbors downstairs. We’re about to hit 1.8 million users and we’re seeing Super Swarms happen all over the world (Indonesia, you crazy!). In short, it’s been an amazing year for foursquare. A huge thank you to anyone that’s ever unlocked a Newbie badge!

And with that, we’re excited to announce that we’ve raised another round of capital. Today we closed on a $20m Series B round with Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and our newest partner, Andreessen Horowitz. We’re thrilled to have the continued support of our original investors and additional support and expertise from the team at Andreessen Horowitz.

The two big names behind Andreessen Horowitz - Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz - are each legends in Silicon Valley. They know better than anyone how to transform startups into successful organizations. As we continue to rapidly expand to take advantage of the opportunities in front of us, Ben and Marc’s expertise in growing companies will be invaluable.

With this new round of financing, our main priority will be to expand our organization to supplement the amazing core team we’ve assembled already (know any great engineers? send them our way!). We’re hoping to build a world-class engineering organization, based primarily in our headquarters in New York City, to help us develop the next generation of mobile + social + local products that will excite our users and provide unique value for local merchants. The new investment capital will also help fund the infrastructure needed to house our team (we’re finally getting a new office!) and support our growing audience of nearly 2m users.

It’s been a crazy year for us and we’re expecting the next 12 months to be even more of an adventure. Look forward to more great product from us soon… we’re really just getting started.

- @dens and the rest of team foursquare