He pulls out his phone to show me an unreleased, nameless game that he and his skunkworks-style team Foursquare Labs have been working on. As in Candyland, you move your game piece forward by drawing cards. Foursquare knows where their phones are in real time, because it powers many widely used apps, from Twitter and Uber to TripAdvisor and AccuWeather.
These are not their names. And this is not what they look like. These are [their unique advertising] IDs that we turned into a fake name and a fake avatar. If your smartphone isn't supported but has Web-surfing capabilities, you can visit Foursquare's Web site. If you're stuck with a regular cell phone , you can still use Foursquare. Just send a text message to Foursquare's SMS code of Let's say you have an Android smartphone with a Foursquare app installed.
How do you use it? You need to hit the town and visit a location. That location could be a bar, restaurant, club or just about anything else. You'd activate your Foursquare app, which taps into your Android phone's GPS receiver to get an idea about where you are. The app will pull up a list of locations near you. You choose the one that you'll be visiting and the app updates your status.
Update your status at a location enough times and you become the mayor of that spot. Visit enough locations -- or enough of the same type of location -- and you may earn a badge. If your friends also have Foursquare they can see your updates and keep track of what's going on. You might even meet up with them later in the night as you converge on a particular location. The first time you use Foursquare to check in to a location you'll earn a Newbie badge.
This is just one of several badges in Foursquare. It's not hard to figure out how to earn some of the badges. For example, visit the same spot several times in a month and you'll earn the Local badge. But others may be more of a challenge.
The founders plan to add more badges to the service over time and solicit user suggestions. One of the ways you earn badges is by visiting locations that have been tagged with specific traits.
Let's say you visit several places in your town that are known to be popular with fraternity members -- you may earn yourself the Animal House badge. The founders depend upon the input of the community to tag locations accurately. It's possible that a location's features could change over time -- if it does you may earn a different badge after a few visits. Users can also submit tips and notes about locations.
Let's say you've decided to visit your favorite burger joint. You happen to know their mushroom bacon burger is amazing. You can check in using Foursquare and add in a tip to let others know about your favorite burger.
Since users submit the tips, you could end up seeing all sorts of information about different locations. It doesn't all have to be positive either. If you think the music a certain club plays is six months behind the times, you can pop into Foursquare and share your thoughts.
The service has the potential to be both a social networking application and a review application. The founders of Foursquare hope to form partnerships with various restaurants, clubs and other sites to offer special benefits to Foursquare members.
For example, a restaurant might offer up a free appetizer to its Foursquare mayor. One potential obstacle for this approach is that it would be easy to game the system.
While the Foursquare app on the iPhone and Android platforms can use the GPS receiver in phones to search for nearby locations, you don't have to rely on GPS to check in.
You could be sitting at home while remotely checking in to locations around the city. If restaurants and other companies hand out real rewards to Foursquare members, you can expect some people will cheat. If your smartphone has a GPS receiver and you download the Foursquare app, why do you need to check in?
Couldn't your phone update Foursquare automatically? Nick Saint. When you first boot up the app, you see a list of your friends, and what they're up to. Clicking on one of your friends will bring up her profile. Press the "Places" button at the bottom of the screen and this will bring up this list of venues near you. Click the venue you're actually in to bring up this screen; now press "Check-in here".
That's it! You're in. You can see who else is in the same spot, and you will be awarded points for your check-ins. Look at a venue on Google Maps, and search for nearby tweets. The 'Tips' tab shows you suggestions for what to do at this venue; you can also add your own. You can earn badges based on your check-ins. Here's the game aspect: you can see a leader board of all of your friends and how many points they have this week. Invite friends from Facebook or Twitter to add more people to the mix.
You can see what your friends have accomplished. Foursquare can ping you when a friend checks in somewhere. On the Foursquare Web site, you can keep track of tasks you want to complete, manage your friends, and review your stats
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