Foursquare Has Arrived: Is Your Liver Ready?
By Nick | Saturday, September 5th, 2009Comments
If you want to look to the future, look at the drinking habits of SXSW Conference attendees. The tools that a handful of drunk engineers and media mavens use to stay in touch with other drunk engineers and media mavens are a leading indicator of how we are all going to communicate in the coming years. In 2006, that tool was Twitter. In 2007, live video streaming was all the rage while 2008 saw the rise of GPS based apps, like Brightkite. In 2009, Foursquare broke out in a big way. Foursquare isn’t a utility, it isn’t a social network, and it isn’t for teenagers. It is a mobile game for grownups, and it looks like a whole lot of fun.
So, how does the game work?
Foursquare is based on its users checking in to bars and restaurants from their mobile phones. Check-ins are worth a variable number of points depending on the time of day and location. Mid-week daytime check-ins aren’t worth anything, while late-night check-ins are worth more. Visiting a wide variety of venues, in different parts of the city, is also rewarded with points and badges. The goal of the game is to move up in the rankings for the places you visit most, and collect badges for certain activity patterns (like checking in past 2am several nights in a row). The top visitor of a venue each week is crowned as its Mayor, and some hip bars in New York and San Francisco are even offering free drinks and other deals to their Mayors.
The beauty of Foursquare is that it uses the same set of principles that video game designers have per to keep you glued to your couch for days at a time to get you off of it and out of the house. The rules are designed to encourage players to go out as much as possible, and to have more fun. For example, you receive 5 bonus points for checking in to a place for the first time (to get you out of your rut). Another quirk, designed to encourage engagement, is that scores are reset every Sunday night – so new players can compete head-to-head with incumbents.
Foursquare launches in Vancouver on Wednesday, September 9th, with a party at V (above Earls) in Yaletown. Vancouver is the first city to have its list of places entirely user-generated, so they are going to be paying a lot of attention to how this particular local launch goes. I plan on being the Mayor of the SoHo Poolhall in Yaletown, unless you think you have me beat.