How to make FourSquare more social
Monday, February 1st, 2010 by Tomer TishgartenOver the past few months, I’ve been using FourSquare more regularly. FourSquare is a social networking service/game that you can use to track your whereabouts. It is typically accessed via an app on a mobile smartphone (Droid, BlackBerry or iPhone). The idea is that you earn points each time you arrive at a location and “check-in.” You earn more points for new places that you discover/visit vs. returning to your usual spots. But the points are virtual — they’re only a valuable way to tell who gets out who doesn’t. From my point of view, FourSquare is the perfect global economic stimulus solution — it encourages users to spend time exploring new places and money. What government or marketer wouldn’t love this thing?!
Well over the weekend, FourSquare sent me an alert that one my friends was at the Nike Factory Store, a nearby discount outlet. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to send him a note and ask him if there are any good deals on Nike running gear (I think that their Dri-FIT products are the ultimate but that’s a topic for another blog). While I could have called or sent him an email, I wanted to send him a text and ask but that feature wasn’t available. I swear that I looked EVERYWHERE and came up empty handed.
While FourSquare is a great tool that allows you to keep up with your friends, it is missing a texting feature that allows you to quickly “chat” with them. Text messaging is the preferred mode to communicate, especially when you’re mobile (source). If it was there, I would have another reason to get out and stimulate the economy. 
Tags: foursquare, Social Media, social networking
February 1st, 2010 at 1:37 pm
For a company that launched nearly 12 months ago Foursquare has been weak as far as basics go – they only released a Blackberry client within the last two weeks! So the lack of a communication feature between users is not surprising. While the recent Bravo deal will give them some mainstream buzz, it will only make the beheading they get when Facebook adds check ins as a feature that much more painful.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Actually, they do have a texting feature in the contact area but the user can chose to remove it on their profile. There are 4 methods you can turn on/off text/email/fb/twitter.