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Foursquare launches new App Gallery, following in Twitter’s footsteps as a platform

Published on May 12, 2010 in Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, mobile, social media and technology. View Comments

Somewhat reminiscent of the way both Facebook and Twitter went about attempting to become platforms for apps to be built on top of, Foursquare has launched a new App Gallery, which includes a mechanism for submitting new apps.

At the present time, Foursquare says it only knows of around a hundred apps first hand, and there are only a handful being showcased in the gallery at the moment. However, they think there are hundreds more apps currently being developed out there. Hence the launch of the gallery, to begin to gather them in one place and encourage the development of more.

I’ve become  a pretty regular user of Foursquare myself, so I’m looking forward to seeing what new apps will be built over the coming months. Also, if I’m ever working on a project where I could see the benefit is having an app built (or using an existing one), then I’d certainly consider it, especially if Foursquare keeps growing fast.

Just one of the apps that caught me eye was The TurnSocial bar, which allows venues to display customers’ Foursquare tips and mayorships directly on their websites. This is quite similar to PlaceWidget.

No doubt there will be plenty more apps with a huge variety of uses. Watch that space.

Have you tried any Foursquare apps yet? Got any good ones to share? Are you developing one yourself?

Foursquare, courting local businesses and partnering with a growing number of bigger brands

Published on April 28, 2010 in Foursquare, business, mobile and social media. View Comments

In addition to Foursquare attempting to make it easy for small, local businesses to sign up, the location-based service is also directly partnering with a growing number of bigger brands and major media organisations.

The news came recently that Foursquare is now partnering with The Wall Street Journal. The partnership will include daily tips from their restaurant review column, Lunch Box, and three new badges. Earning the badges will involve challenges in New York. For instance, the Banker Badge will require three check-ins within the New York financial district.

wsj_on_foursquare

Amongst others, the growing number of brands Foursquare has partnered with now includes The New York Times, Bravo TV, History Channel, MTV, VH1, restaurant review service Zagat, Warner Bros., HBO, Condé Nast’s Lucky Magazine, the City of Chicago, Harvard University, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and even Starbucks.

New York Times

If the partnerships work out well for the brands, businesses keep jumping on the Foursquare bandwagon, and if a lot of smaller businesses start signing up, it might just start to look like Foursquare really has something here. What do you think?

Harvard University

Foursquare vs Gowalla. Too early to pick a winner, or have you decided?

Published on March 23, 2010 in Foursquare, Twitter, mobile and social media. View Comments

Much is being said at the moment about the battle for early-ish users between location-based services Foursquare and Gowalla, so I won’t go over old ground by explaining how they work here. Explanations are not hard to come by.

What I will say is that I’ve been using Foursquare for a few months, ever since it became available in Sydney. I’ve also been using Gowalla more in the last couple of weeks, after installing it earlier but not really using it that much. I’ve decided to keep using both for a while to see how each develops and which one I like more over time. No doubt both of these services will develop a fair bit in the coming months, so is it perhaps a bit early to tell which one is going to be better?

foursquare

Gowalla has only recently added the ability to snap and upload photos from a location you’ve checked-in at, and also to make comments on other people’s posts. I like both of these features a lot, and it’s made me want to use Gowalla more, for now. Perhaps Foursquare will be thinking seriously about added features such as this.

I’ve noticed that in Foursquare, fewer people actually comment, or rather “shout” when they check-in somewhere. I wonder if this would change if there was the ability for people to comment on their posts? After all, it was the reply function of Twitter that really got that going in the early days.

gowalla

The whole Foursquare vs Gowalla debate that seems to be going on in the blogosphere reminds me of the days (not so long ago really) when people were debating between Pownce and Twitter, and whether there was room enough for both new services to survive. Needless to say, Pownce isn’t around anymore and Twitter has tens of millions of monthly users. I don’t think it was that Pownce was a bad service at all, in fact it had some really great features. It’s just that everyone was over on Twitter. Twitter had the momentum from early on. Eventually, that momentum carried it all the way to celebrities starting to us it, and consequently into the talk show circuit. The rest is history.

Will there be room enough for both Foursquare and Gowalla this time? I know, I know, there are others in the space too I here you say, but Foursquare and Gowalla are the two that are getting the most blog and column centimetres  for now.

What’s your take? Have you tried both? Which one do you prefer at the moment? Do you think they’ll both be able to survive? Which one are most of your social media friends using? Perhaps that’s the best measure.

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