Location based social network Foursquare has launched a new do-it-yourself tool for businesses to register their venues and gain access to a free Foursquare analytics tool. Foursquare’s stated aim is to “encourage people to explore their neighbourhoods and then reward people for doing so”, and presumably to eventually make a lot of money in the process.
This new tool seems to be the beginning of the move to automating the process of signing up businesses. If it really takes off, it’s certainly going to need to be automated. There are a LOT of businesses out there that could end up using this if Foursquare becomes as big as Twitter, or bigger.
On Foursquare, venues now have a “Are you the manager of this business” link.
This link guides you to an easy 2 step business sign-up process. You confirm your business information, which is apparently verified manually by Foursquare. You can then go ahead and create the first Foursquare specials for customers to redeem by checking in repeatedly at the business venue.
In addition, to promote the specials at each business venue, Foursquare says it’s in the process of creating official “foursquare window clings”.
What could be of really good value to the businesses involved are the real-time stats that will be captured and displayed by the analytics tool. The stats will include: most recent visitors, most frequent visitors, the times of the day people check in, total number of unique visitors, and a historgram of check-ins per day – all fairly useful marketing information.
I don’t know about you, but if I were running a small business such as a café, bar or restaurant, I’d be all over this as Foursquare grows, and it seems to be going gangbusters. Apart from the time involved in managing the tool and specials, it’s free, for now.
What do you think of this new tool? Do you think this will work out to be a cracker business model for Foursquare, or not? Is it useful enough for businesses and customers alike?
