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Poll: Are you on Foursquare? (Now on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Palm webOS)

Foursquare first hit the scene some time ago, turning New York City into a virtual playground for smartphone users with location aware phones. The idea is pretty simple: you check in at various locations – be it a restaurant, a bar or a grocery store – and you get badges for certain achievements. For example, if you visit a certain number of NYU beer pong bars, you earn yourself the “Animal House” badge. If you frequent a location more than anyone else, you become “mayor” of that place.

Of course, you can also keep track of the activity of friends and other users as well as do “shouts” to anyone nearby. But what will make Foursquare more significant down the road is its ability to let businesses interface with their customers. David Lewis, writing for ReveNews, predicted that we might see Foursquare suggesting restaurants/hangouts based on your history in the same fashion that Amazon picks out books you might like. However, Foursquare still has some stiff competition, such as Yelp, Gowalla, Loopt and Brightkite. Foursquare does have the advantage of getting plenty of media coverage lately and has also revamped its app to be sleeker and more power efficient (especially for Android phones such as the HTC Hero or the myTouch 3G). Foursquare has recently expanded beyond the few major metropolitan areas and is slowly ramping up its fun factor and user networks in every corner of the world.

This writer signed up for Foursquare a few weeks ago and I admit that being somewhat of a lamewad, I don’t go out on the town nearly enough to comment on the intended use for the app. But the coolest features such as the “nearby places” list (similar to Google Local Search) and the tips for nearby restaurants are pretty impressive. For example, there’s a coffee shop a few blocks from my office and under the “tips” column, there are a number of recommendations from the menu, which I can imagine being particularly helpful for first time customers. Tips also provides a likely forum for spreading the word on great deals and limited time promotions, which would make Foursquare a “must check” app before entering any business – much like failing to check RetailMeNot for free coupon codes before ordering anything off the Internet is a money-wasting failure in due diligence.

Foursquare is definitely an app to keep your eye on. If you have a BlackBerry, iPhone, Android or Palm phone, go ahead and download it now – it’s free. If Foursquare ends up being the next Twitter, you’ll likely get more from it by adopting the technology early.

Are you on Foursquare? Take our poll below and let us know your thoughts in the comments

P.S. Anyone in the Pittsburgh area with Foursquare ought to add me. Just send me a Tweet @JackBusch and I’ll add you.

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Tags: Android, Foursquare, iphone

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 3:29 am by Jack Busch and is filed under Cell Phone Applications, Cell Phones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.