Are you playing Foursquare? Are you “going out” with Gowalla? Are you looped in with Loopt?
Location-based services are once again changing the face of social networking. Where relationships were once at the center of user experience, in the Golden Triangle of mobile, social, and real-time interaction, “places” take center stage and corresponding activities and rewards become the cast and crew of the production.
What started as a way to literally see and be seen, has now transformed into a universe where physical and online activity merge to improve experiences and relationships between people and also between people and businesses, services, and locales. We were lured into “checking in” through gaming and game theory. We earn points and badges for adding locations, checking into them, and also adding tips for other related activities worth consideration. But since then, the resulting culture and behavior emerging within these networks have rapidly matured into a microcosm powered by the 4C’s of commerce, connections, community, and content.
In a recent post by Marshall Kirkpatrick for ReadWriteWeb, he reviewed the top reasons why people check in to location networks. To summarize:
– Finding people
– Chance meetups
– Badges/Points/Gifts
– Special offers and coupons
– Local tips/discovery
– People tracking
– Personal history/Diary
I would add one more. Whether it’s said or simply a subconscious act, it is the essence of social networking universally. People check in as a form of social currency and the resulting capital and the value we place on it is different network by network. As such, it governs how we interact with objects and one another and also defines our net worth based on how we earn, spend, lose, and build capital.
As in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs, individuals are earning prominence through the tireless acts of earning visibility and community through interaction, content creation, and the establishment of goodwill by investing in the experiences of others.
The State of Local Social Networking
Facebook touts registered user numbers in the neighborhood of 500 million and Twitter claims over 100 million. However, with the amount of media attention given to Foursquare especially, one might expect a higher network of users, especially when local service providers are concerned. As of today, Foursquare boasts roughly 2 million users and Gowalla checks-in with somewhere around 350,000.
If you want to get an idea about the future of technology and society, pay attention to the left side of the adoption bell curve. It’s less about how many people are networking via LBS today and more about what it means for people and businesses at the local level and how the 4C’s become the hub for bridging digital and offline social economics.
Robert J. Moore, CEO of RJMetrics recently studied data related to Foursquare and Gowalla and published his research in TechCrunch.
Foursquare is acquiring new users at an impressive clip, averaging almost 13,000 new users per day over the last 30 days while Gowalla’s user acquisition rate hovered at one-tenth the growth with 1,370 users per day. Perhaps most compelling is Foursquare’s average daily growth rate, the number of new users in a given day divided by the total user population from the previous day. When compared to Gowalla, Foursquare is averaging a daily growth rate of 75%.
Location-based networks are measured by users and also by the number of venues contained within the system and the velocity of its expansion. At the moment Foursquare boasts 5.6 millions venues with Gowalla housing 1.4 million.
In most social networks as well as mobile networking, women rule. However, in Foursquare, 64% of users are male, 33% are female and 3% did not specify gender.
The Business of Checking-In
Local services are realizing, albeit slowly, that increasing visibility in the real world, on the traditional Web and now the social web, is an effective way of competing for attention where it is focused. Foot traffic, Yellow Pages, Google and Yahoo Search are losing favor to new forms of research and referrals. Yelp paved the way for social reviews and referrals, but Foursquare and the like are introducing trusted opinions and real-life networking into the mix that reward exploration and experimentation. Businesses can only benefit by playing along.
However, on Foursquare, 18% of the venues have at least one “tip” associated with them. Only 3% offer “specials.” 32% of listed venues have been checked into only once or never. Across Foursquare and Gowalla, the most popular venue names include:
– Home
– Subway
– Starbucks
– McDonalds
– Burger King
– Walgreens
Not only are businesses competing for the moment, they are also competing for the future. And with limited resources, identifying where to focus time and energy is paramount. What took Twitter some time to formally embrace, Foursquare is realizing that businesses, in addition to everyday users, are the beneficiaries of check-ins. As such, Foursquare is concentrating marketing and development resources to helping businesses compete for check-ins through specials, loyalty programs, campaigns, promotions, and events.
Businesses, if you read one thing in this post, CLAIM your business on Foursquare right now and read a bit about how to make the most of the service to increase your customer-base as well as increase loyalty among existing customers by introducing new and fun engagement programs.
Foursquare recommends offering:
– Mayor specials
– Check-in specials
– Frequency-based specials
– Wildcard specials
– Loyalty programs
– Variable ranges for nearby offers
– Tips
These offers and lures carry across the mobile and social experience, extending your brand across social graphs on Facebook and Twitter through iPhone, Android, and Blackberry phones.
Foursquare also offers real-time venue stats for business owners to gather insight into their new “digital” consumers and spark creativity in campaigns and service programs. For now, available information includes:
– Most recent visitors
– Most frequent visitors
– Times of day for check-ins
– Number of unique visitors
– Histogram of daily check-ins
– Gender
– Check-ins also broadcast to Twitter and Facebook
As The Brand Builder Olivier Blanchard asks, do you know who the mayor of your business is?
Making the Business Case
Foursquare provides window clings, as does Yelp and other services, to attract passerby’s. For example, Hampton Inn and Suites (below) and Whole Foods are among the many businesses proudly displaying the ability to check-in “here.”
While effective, this is only one of the ways a business can leverage location-based social networks for customer acquisition and retention.
Here are a few examples as collected from around the web.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) partnered with Foursquare to encourage transit ridership
Starbucks offered $1 off any size Frappuccino for mayors and as a result, observed a 50% increase in check-ins at its locations.
Monique’s Chocolates in Palo Alto acquired over 50 new customers and earned over 100 redemptions for its special of “buy one get one free” for truffles. Each redemption also equated to a 25% return ratio. In comparison, the chocolate shop ran an ad in a local paper and acquired only one new customer at a cost of $300.
AJ Bombers, a popular burger joint in Milwaukee, increased menu item purchases by 30% through its special promotions of free burgers for mayors and free cookies for adding tips. Also demonstrating creativity, AJ Bombers hosted the equivalent of a Tweetup for customers to help them earn Swarm and I’m on a Boat badges while increasing loyalty and sales.
Using Gowalla, the New York Nets hid free pairs of virtual game tickets throughout sports-related check in spots. These tickets could be exchanged for real game tickets as well as other prizes.
Through Gowalla, the Courier Journal, Kentucky’s largest newspaper, hosted a city tour and bar crawl during the Kentucky Derby where visitors earned special badges for following the guided tour.
While these examples represent only a few of the many ingenious and viral ways to attract and reward customers, the true promise of these portable social networks is the ability to bring to life online and offline relationships and experiences to unlock a city’s true treasures. Business owners, the question is, have you checked in?
Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook
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Good Article..
Brian,
Have you noticed certain venues being deleted?
I have noticed previous check-in places are gone and have been replaced by inaccurate locations.
Steve, yes…I have noticed. We need a more effective system for empowering the strong community management of venues (similar to Wikipedia for example).
kinda.. but EEK! you mean not allowing PR firms to add their client? LOL (just kidding)
Foursquare has done two thing to ensure its continued growth by making their community powerful partners. They have opened up an Application Programming Interface to allow programmers and developers the opportunity to create web and mobile applications built around the user and venue data, and relevant to this comment, they have created levels of superusers to police the accuracy of their location data. Superusers come in 3 levels, (1 earned as the result of a number of check-ins, 2 conferred by community leaders at Foursquare). With built in checks and balances the superusers merge duplicate venues, correct incorrect addresses and delete bad or closed locations.
Something they'll need to address is multiple variations (mostly misspellings) of venue names resulting in multiple mayors, etc. of the same business/location.
Brian, thank you so much for including our business AJ Bombers in this article. We really appreciate the recognition and additional exposure. Looking forward to seeing you at UnGeeked.
Joe, keep up the good work. I'll have to stop by for a burger some time! 🙂
Barrie Burgers all around! Would love that.
Congrats on your accomplishments!
Hi, thank you Ana.
Brian,
In my opinion when check-in social networks first started, so much of what made them addicting was their ability to create competition. People would want to become a part of a competition to become a mayor or get X badge. We're naturally competitive it makes us want to go in and become a part of something.
The later benefits of businesses came as part because they saw the swarms of people becoming a part of social check-ins.
With the massive growth FourSquare is seeing, it's very likely businesses will start to notice (most aren't early adopters), and begin to claim their business. There is enough data out there to suggest that it is a very useful tool in attracting visitors, whether they are retained customers or new ones. All businesses have to do is offer SOMETHING, and users will start checking in. I really like the frequency reward, as it will likely lead to increased loyalty to the brand.
I know I use FourSquare because it is fun to do, and because I know eventually there will be some kind of rewards. In Madison, Wisconsin it hasn't really caught on quite yet, but some businesses are beginning to understand its power, and I suspect more will start to understand soon.
This is part of a bigger trend in tech that basically is turning life into a big video game, which is incredibly interesting. Augmented Reality, Location-based social media, and other emerging technology is making life more fun, interesting, and full of information. It's a really cool trend that's just in its infancy. Once Visual Search (as in Google Goggles) is optimized, it will change everything.
Tom Miesen
@tmiesen
Life 2.0: http://bit.ly/aAxQqH
With the massive growth FourSquare is seeing, it's very likely businesses will start to notice (most aren't early adopters), and begin to claim their business. There is enough data out there to suggest that it is a very useful tool in attracting visitors, whether they are retained customers or new ones. All businesses have to do is offer SOMETHING, and users will start checking in. I really like the frequency reward, as it will likely lead to increased loyalty to the brand.
I know I use FourSquare because it is fun to do, and because I know eventually there will be some kind of rewards. In Madison, Wisconsin it hasn't really caught on quite yet, but some businesses are beginning to understand its power, and I suspect more will start to understand soon.
This is part of a bigger trend in tech that basically is turning life into a big video game, which is incredibly interesting. Augmented Reality, Location-based social media, and other emerging technology is making life more fun, interesting, and full of information. It's a really cool trend that's just in its infancy. Once Visual Search (as in Google Goggles) is optimized, it will change everything.
Tom Miesen
@tmiesen
Life 2.0: http://bit.ly/aAxQqH
This is a terrific article on Foursquare and business. Your advice to “Claim Your Business” is good as well. Has anyone tried to claim their business? We have tried for many months. To date, no one has has “verified” our business by telephone – which is mandatory. It's difficult to be an early adopter when you can't.
Is Gowalla available on any other platform other than the iPhone yet? While Foursquare was originally an app on the iPhone it was fairly easy to check in via a mobile web program. And, now the Blackberry app is pretty good. Although, because of the way Blackberry does GPS, I have more errors as to where I am than iPhone users I know.
I've been experimenting with Foursquare for a couple months now because my students are asking about but it has been about as much fun as going to the dentist.
Yes, there is enormous potential for busienss but not until consumers get more benefit than digital badges. Yes, there may be site-specific uses (finding people at a large conference) and yes, there is a niche group who have a drive to be the mayor of Dunkin' Donuts but for the mainstream, this will not catch on until the benefits are more tangible. I wrote about my Foursquare experiment in a village, a city and New York here -> http://businessesgrow.com/2010/06/08/is-this-fo…
Brian, I think you asked the right question: Businesses – have you checked in? If you can really connect and reward customers through this channel, it may be a possible point of differentiation.
w00t, I love FourSquare – tickled to get my first Swarm Badge the other week on International Social Media Day! Got my Jetsetter badge, Barista badge and many others.
However, for some time the jury has been out for me as to what exactly the benefit of LBS' is to us the users. I totally get it from a business' standpoint – particularly bricks and mortar businesses.
So a couple months ago, I was tweeting with a buddy in the UK and I talked about being the Mayor of Jimbo's, my local health food store. I wondered if they noticed or even cared. They didn't appear to… up to that point. I got a tweet back, then a DM, then a private email and an invitation to come in for lunch and meet the Marketing Director. Now, I was impressed!! I met up with this guy and we had a wonderful chat about their social media strategy.
Still, I was left with the feeling that there has to be a vast number of small, local businesses who just don't have the manpower/resources to fully integrate social media, including LBS.
I'm certainly becoming a total evangelist for local businesses now to claim their business on these sites – amen to that, Brian!
w00t, I love FourSquare – tickled to get my first Swarm Badge the other week on International Social Media Day! Got my Jetsetter badge, Barista badge and many others.
However, for some time the jury has been out for me as to what exactly the benefit of LBS' is to us the users. I totally get it from a business' standpoint – particularly bricks and mortar businesses.
So a couple months ago, I was tweeting with a buddy in the UK and I talked about being the Mayor of Jimbo's, my local health food store. I wondered if they noticed or even cared. They didn't appear to… up to that point. I got a tweet back, then a DM, then a private email and an invitation to come in for lunch and meet the Marketing Director. Now, I was impressed!! I met up with this guy and we had a wonderful chat about their social media strategy.
Still, I was left with the feeling that there has to be a vast number of small, local businesses who just don't have the manpower/resources to fully integrate social media, including LBS.
I'm certainly becoming a total evangelist for local businesses now to claim their business on these sites – amen to that, Brian!
The realization by Foursquare to give each business ownership is critical to the further growth of the site, and it somewhat removes the bottleneck that existed. Businesses weren't able to get specials implemented in a timely manner by the Foursquare team, and even now it takes a while to get confirmed as a business owner.
Once that interaction becomes more real time, it will provide the lubricant for the Foursquare engine to run smoothly.
I always find your posts very informative and it prompts me to learn more and act more. I now want to go and figure out the whole four square business. Thanks for the push.
I always find your posts very informative and it prompts me to learn more and act more. I now want to go and figure out the whole four square business. Thanks for the push.
Location based applications are becoming the wave of the future. Soon enough business will be checking in especially with the growth that Foursquare is seeing.
I loved this post – thank you for the research you so instinctively know we need. I've found myself mentioning Foursquare to at least one person per day. Customer intelligence is truly the key to these tools – I can certainly appreciate that with my database management background. What better way than a tool that rewards you for checking-in?
Great article! Anything else in the social media space that is gaining speed aside from Foursquare? Don't you think that social media has become overwhelming for people to maintain?
The first pictures like a Open LED Sign and like we made …