Foursquare Day (stylized as 4sqDay) is a global social media holiday that was first observed on April 16, 2010 in hundreds of cities around the world. On March 26, 2010 the New York City location-based service startup, Foursquare, officially declared April 16 "Foursquare Day" after a grass-roots movement that began in Tampa, Florida gained traction and eventually spread to hundreds of cities throughout the world.[1]
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Foursquare Day was coined by Nate Bonilla-Warford, an optometrist from Tampa, Florida on March 12, 2010. The idea of Foursquare Day came to Bonilla-Warford after thinking about a simple calculation, 4^2 = 16. Since 4 squared equals 16, Bonilla-Warford came up with the idea to check-in to Foursquare on the 4th month and 16th day of the year, hence April 16.[2]
Bonilla-Warford was “thinking about new ways to promote his business” when he came up with the idea.[3] However, Bonilla-Warford decided to post his idea on the official Foursquare support page at GetSatisfaction.com to see if the idea would gain any traction. Approximately one week passed without any response to the idea, but on March 20, 2010 another Foursquare user by the name of Kenneth Glanton noticed Bonilla-Warford’s post. Glanton responded to the idea with a post of his own that read, “Brilliant- and they should make a foursquare badge to commemorate the day.” [4]
It did not take long for Nate Bonilla-Warford and Kenneth Glanton to begin recruiting friends and colleagues to join the grassroots project as well as use the power of social media to spread the word about this new idea “Foursquare Day.” After a few weeks of broadcasting this idea on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, Bonilla-Warford and his team started to attract attention from local newspapers[5] and TV stations[6] in the Tampa area. In order to bring this idea to a global scale, Bonilla-Warford asked those who were participating in the Foursquare Day project to use the Twitter hashtag “#4sqday” when sending out tweets that mentioned the day.[7]
On March 23, 2010 Laura Petrolino joined the project and started the Foursquare Day Facebook Fan Page[8] in hopes of attracting Foursquare users all over the world. Petrolino also wrote an article on her blog that was geared toward local businesses in Tampa explaining how they would benefit if they participated in Foursquare Day. Shortly following Petrolino’s blog post, Creative Loafing wrote their own article about why Tampa businesses should celebrate Foursquare Day.[9]
On March 25, 2010, Bonilla-Warford met a person by the name of Jessica Barnett at a social media luncheon. There they discussed contacting Foursquare about designing a special Foursquare Day badge. At this point there was no official announcement made by the New York City startup that Foursquare Day was officially backed by the company. Jessica contacted Foursquare via a tweet on Twitter asking the company if they would consider designing a Foursquare Day badge.[10] The following day, Foursquare responded to the request with an official announcement on Twitter that declared April 16 Foursquare Day.[11] Foursquare's announcement brought even more attention to Foursquare Day, but this time on a much bigger scale.
In 2010 fast food giant McDonald's launched a spring pilot program that took advantage of Foursquare Day. Foursquare users who "checked-in" to McDonald's restaurants on Foursquare Day were given the chance to win gift cards in 5 and 10 dollar increments. Mashable reported that there was a "33% increase in foot traffic" to McDonald's venues, as apparent in the increase in Foursquare check-ins. [12]