ShareThisNow you can ping your friends to get together at a restaurant or bar. Or just shout at them.
They can find you through the global-positioning system (GPS) chips in your smart phone if you've logged on to the Foursquare social network and "checked in" at a local business location. On Foursquare, a ping is a brief "I'm here" message, while a shout is a text message.
"I've got about 150 friends and mutual acquaintances on the service," said Shawn Horton, 24, of St. Paul, Minn., a dedicated user of social media. "You just let your GPS phone say 'I'm here'."
But New York-based Foursquare, a hot new social network that claims 1.5 million users nationwide who can locate each other whenever they want, is also a nascent cell phone advertising company -- albeit one without a discernible business model so far.
With consumers "checking in" via Foursquare at restaurants or bars, they become accessible to both friends and advertisers. Foursquare sends to their cell phones a list of nearby businesses, including other restaurants or bars that are offering specials on food or drinks.
Each business has a page on Foursquare that includes a list of Foursquare users who have checked-in there and consumer reviews of the businesses. So far it's free advertising for bars, restaurants and the like, although some suspect the rapidly growing Foursquare will charge them fees at some point.
But for now the Foursquare service looks democratic.
"Participants are able to share their whereabouts with friends, and it benefits the venues insofar as it's a very cheap way to market," Horton said.
In addition, Foursquare sets the privacy bar high. It lets consumers limit sharing their locations with only verified friends but gives them the option of sharing more broadly through connections to social networks Facebook or Twitter.
But believing that Foursquare information is really private may be a leap of faith for those already wary because of Facebook's shifting privacy policies and its users' confusion over what private information they were authorizing to be shared. No one knows if the Facebook controversy will dampen the growth of social networking.
So, is this the new face of advertising?
Maybe. Cell phone advertising has long been considered the next big thing, but the question was always how it would work. Sending text messages or e-mails to cell phones could be construed as spam or just annoying. Beaming electronic coupons to phones as consumers walked past a retailer was technically difficult because not all smart phones work the same way. And for some people, just the idea is eerily Big Brother-like.
So Foursquare uses a more time-tested method: persuasion. Rather than pursue consumers, it lures them in to its website with the promise of getting free merchandise once their cell phone GPS chips "prove" they are "checked in" at a restaurant or bar offering a Foursquare special.
Plus, visiting a retailer more often than anyone else allows a consumer to earn the Foursquare title of "mayor" of that business. Being mayor also has its rewards; Starbucks locations offer their Foursquare mayor $1 off on a Frappuccino.
Foursquare also offers consumers electronic merit badges, which have no value except bragging rights, such as the "Warhol" badge for frequenting an art gallery. The Barrio Tequila Bar recently e-mailed frequent patrons that it was sponsoring a Foursquare event -- if 50 consumers "checked-in" at the bar on Foursquare within a three-hour period, all could earn their "swarm badge" from Foursquare. During the World Cup soccer match, Foursquare offered a Super Fan badge to people watching the televised game at certain retail locations.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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