Watch out Virg, there are some new mayors in town!
Foursquare.com is a new social-utility tool that uses the GPS component of smart phones—like
Blackberries and
iPhones—to help players find their friends, discover local venues and unlock discounts at their favorite locales.
Here’s how it works: Foursquare players get points for checking in when they visit their favorite local hangouts. They can get bonus points for checking in often. The player who checks in the most at any given venue becomes the mayor of that spot.
Player profiles also display Boy Scout-like badges they’ve earned for various visitation accomplishments, such as “Bender” (four nights out in a row) and “Jetsetter” (five airport check-ins).
So what's so exciting about Foursquare?
Capital Gains met up with some of Lansing’s newly anointed mayors to find out.
Power of PlaceFoursquare, for starters, holds the opportunity to “re-localize” an increasingly global economy.
“Hyper-local news, hyper-local advertising, hyper-local social media—these things all exist in some form currently,” says 29-year-old Travis Stoliker, sales and marketing director of
Liquid Web Inc. and mayor of
Los Tres Amigos in East Lansing. "But they have been limited due to price, availability (how many people have them) and distribution."
But, new phone technology and applications like Foursquare are changing all that.
“This is gigantic,” he says. “Foursquare is just the beginning of location-aware technologies.”
Rediscovering the City“When I heard about it,” says Kristoffer Bakken, a 30-year-old multi-media producer from Holt, “I thought, ‘Hey, I go to
Crunchy’s all the time, I bet I could become mayor.’”
I found Bakken surveying his domain at East Lansing’s Crunchy’s where he is, in fact, now mayor. He’s also the Foursquare mayor of
Menna’s Joint and
Beggar’s Banquet.
But mayorship isn’t the only reason he's on Foursquare. He says that he’s learned a lot about Lansing just by check in at his regular stops.
Kris explains that every time you turn on Foursquare, you’re given a list of places around your check-in point. "It brings up my option to check in, and it’ll show me exactly where it is. And that’s when I’ve found a lot of places that I’ve never been to," he explains. As in, “Oh, there’s a
Jamaican food place Downtown? I want to go there!”
Tips and TricksIf Foursquare only helped Capital region residents locate area attractions, it wouldn’t be much different from
Google maps.
But Bob Fish, CEO (and often mayor) of
Biggby Coffee and wife Michelle, mayor of both
Buffalo Wild Wings and
East Lansing’s Recycling Center, are fans of some other intricacies of Foursquare.
“What’s really cool,” Fish says, “is you can lay down tips. So, when I was at
Barnes and Noble I laid down a tip and said, ‘Hey, the guys in the music department are awesome.’”
These kinds of tips are posted to a player’s feed. But more importantly, according to Michelle, her friends’ tips pop up on her screen when she checks in to nearby venues. “We went to
Jimmy’s [Pub] last night and it said, ‘Since you’re so close to the
Small Planet, they have an excellent beer selection.’”
There’s a key element here that’s different from previous social networking tools. People don’t post location-specific tips and suggestions on
Facebook, and they might not trust a stranger’s opinion or review on
Yelp.
But when your friends’ tip pops up on Foursquare, you pay attention. Players are often inspired to get out of their old routines and explore more new or unknown venues.
Things to DoTerry Brock—the busy mayor of
Chapelure Bakery and Cafe, the
Wharton Center's Fairchild Theater,
Grand River Coffee Café,
Harrison Roadhouse and
Soup Spoon Café—started using Foursquare to see if he could promote cultural heritage development by introducing players to Michigan State University's many historical sites.
As a MSU anthropology and archeology graduate, Brock is well aware of East Lansing’s history, but he thinks that Foursquare “makes going to places a little more fun and more interactive.”
“It also reminds people about places they like in Lansing,” he says, adding that Lansing appears to “suffer from the ‘there's-nothing-to-do’ syndrome, when in actuality, there is something to do.”
Catching OnStoliker, like the other Foursquare mayors, admits that Foursquare needs to grow in the local market in order to function at its full potential. Most Lansing area players, he says, are self-proclaimed techies and “early adopters” of new technology. The network is new, in fact, that checking in to a favorite local hotspot often means adding the locale to the grid yourself.
In major cities however, it’s already becoming mainstream and businesses are using Foursquare as a customer-reward tool—mayors get discounts and freebies, and checking in unlocks other bonuses.
Lansing-area mayors agree that Foursquare is growing quickly and say that it’s only a matter of time before local venues offer similar Foursquare incentives in the Lansing community.
Bob Fish says he hopes to eventually reward regulars who visit his coffeehouses.
“There will be a big sticker on the cash register and it will say, 'If you become the mayor of this Biggby, you’ll get
x,'” he says. "Whatever
x is."
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Julianne VanWagenen is a new contributor to Capital Gains.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography. Dave tried the past two weeks to become mayor of anywhere and never did it.
Photos:
Foursquare on an iPhone
Bob and Michelle Fish
Kristoffer Bakken
Terry Brock at Chapelure
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie