| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | New York City, New York, USA |
| Founder(s) | Dennis Crowley Naveen Selvadurai |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people |
Dennis Crowley, Co-Founder, CEO |
| Employees | 75+ |
| Website | foursquare.com |
| Alexa rank | 798 (January 2012[update])[1] |
| Type of site | Social Networking |
| Registration | Required |
| Users | 15 million[2] |
| Available in | English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese |
| Launched | March 11, 2009 |
| Current status | Active |
Foursquare, stylized as foursquare, is a location-based social networking website for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by selecting from a list of venues the application locates nearby.[3] Location is based on GPS hardware in the mobile device or network location provided by the application. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes "badges".
The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball as his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. Google bought Dodgeball in 2005 and shut it down in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude. Dodgeball user interactions were based on SMS technology, rather than an application.[4]
Foursquare is the second iteration of the same idea, that people can use mobile devices to interact with their environment. As of June 2011, the company reported it had 10 million registered users.[5] The company was expected to pass 750 million check-ins before the end of June 2011, with an average of about 3 million check-ins per day. 50 percent of users come from outside US and also 50 percent of users are female.[6] Support for French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese was added in February, 2011. Support for Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Thai was added in September, 2011. [7]
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Foursquare is a web and mobile application that allows registered users to post their location at a venue ("check-in") and connect with friends. Check-in requires active user selection and points are awarded at check-in. Users can choose to have their check-ins posted on their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or both. In version 1.3 of their iPhone application, foursquare enabled push-notification of friend updates, which they call "Pings". Users can also earn badges by checking in at locations with certain tags, for check-in frequency, or for other patterns such as time of check-in.[8] The company has stated that users will be able to add their own custom badges to the site in the future.
Users can create a "To Do" list for their private use and add "Tips" to venues that other users can read, which serve as suggestions for great things to do, see or eat at the location.[9]
If a user has checked-in to a venue on more days (meaning only one check-in per day qualifies for calculating mayorship) than anyone else in the past 60 days, the check-ins are valid under foursquare's time and distance protocols, and they have a profile photo, they will be crowned "Mayor" of that venue, until someone else earns the title by checking in more times than the previous mayor.[10] On August 26, 2010, foursquare rolled out a new feature which notifies users of the number of days left before he or she is crowned "Mayor". When a user "checks in" to a venue on Foursquare via a mobile app, if he or she is within 10 check-ins of becoming the mayor, foursquare alerts the user of the days left before becoming mayor on the check-in confirmation screen.[11]
Badges are earned by checking into various venues. Some badges can only be earned in a specific city. foursquare has, however, changed the way they handle badges, and now when a user gains a badge, he or she has the same badges across all cities. Once a badge is earned by a player, it will remain on that user's profile indefinitely.
There are a handful of introductory badges that are earned as milestones in usage. Some badges are tied to venue "tags" and the badge earned depends on the tags applied to the venue.[12] Other badges may be specific to a city, venue, event, or date. Some badges use identical icons, but are earned differently. There is no official foursquare badge list available from the company.
On September 23, 2010, foursquare announced that users can now earn badges for completing tasks as well as checking in.[13] On October 22, 2010, astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock unlocked the NASA Explorer badge by checking into foursquare from the International Space Station.[14][15]
Some available badges shown within the app:
Each time the user checks into a place, he receives points. Scores break down as follows:
The service provides three levels of "Superuser status" (which is not to be confused with the "Super User" badge). Superuser status is conferred on users who have been selected by Foursquare staff for their helpful contributions to the community.[18]
All superusers can review a queue of requested changes for a single city, and can select a new city at will.
Foursquare Brands allows companies to create pages of tips and allows users to “follow” the company and receive special, expert tips from them when they check-in at certain locations. Some of the companies even allow users to unlock special badges with enough check-ins. On most company’s pages, their Facebook, Twitter and company website links were displayed as well as tips and lists generated by the company. According to the website, the most popular company page is MTV. MTV offers a special “GTL badge” for users who check-into the gym, a beach or tanning salon, and a Laundromat within a 7 day period. MTV has 128 tips and four different lists including: Jersey Shore Cast Hottest Club List, When I Was 17: Stars’ High Schools, Jay-Z’s New York and MTV’s Hottest Music Video Locations. Each list includes 6-10 locations and allows users to view a list and a map of the locations on the list.
Foursquare started out in 2009 with limited availability in only 100 worldwide metro areas.[19] In January 2010, foursquare changed their location model to allow check-ins from any location worldwide.[20] On February 21, 2011 foursquare reached 7 million users IDs.[21] On August 8, 2011 President Barack Obama joined foursquare, with the intention that the staff at the White House will use the service to post tips from places the president has visited.[22]
Foursquare currently has iPhone, Symbian, Android, webOS, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry applications.[23] A Maemo application is in early development stage and is not featured on the foursquare website.[24] Users with Symbian phones and Pocket PCs (Windows Mobile touchscreen) can also use foursquare via Waze, which is also available for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.[25] Also, there's another application for Symbian users named "Sym4Square" is similar to the application for Android, BlackBerry and iPhone.[26] Users may also use their mobile browsers to access foursquare mobile, but feature phone users must search for venues manually instead of using GPS that PDA applications can use.
Foursquare Day (4sqDay) is a global event launched in 2010 in Tampa, FL.[27] The event is held every April 16th (April being the 4th month and the 16th being equal to four squared).[28][29] Some cities have made official proclamations of April 16th being Foursquare Day (Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Cincinnati, Ohio; Corpus Christi, Texas; Gaithersburg, Maryland; Indianapolis, Indiana; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Kennesaw, Georgia; Manchester, New Hampshire; Miami, Florida; New York City; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Seattle, Washington; Miami, Florida; Victoria, Canada; Toronto, Canada; Ramat Hasharon, Israel)[30][31][32]
In September 2010 foursquare announced version 2.0 of its check-in app which helps to direct users to new locations and activities, rather than just sharing their location with friends. The list of personal list of places and activities, called to-dos, has been separated from the general advice from other users section called "tips". Foursquare has also created a button that will add any location in the app to a user's to-do list, and the app will now remind the user when there are to-do items nearby. Third party sites such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Zagat have added an "Add to My foursquare" button, which will add the location to the user's to-do list.[33]
Foursquare 3.0 was released for Android and iPhone users on the evening of March 8, 2011. There exists a third party Windows Phone 7 client[34] that implements these v3.0 features. As of July 4, 2011, the official foursquare application for Windows Phone 7 also has these features.
foursquare 4.0 was released for the iPhone on the morning of October 12, 2011 with other platform support coming soon. foursquare adds a new feature called "Radar". Radar is able to notify you, for example, when you’re close to a place that’s either on your to-do list or another list you follow or when three or more friends have checked in to a nearby venue. It’s powered by their Explore algorithm, so you’ll be sure to get notifications that are relevant to you.
Foursquare is principally funded by Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. The company raised $1.35 million in its Series A and $20 million in its Series B round.[35][36] On June 24, 2011 foursquare raised $50 million on a $600 million valuation.[5]
In February 2010, the company entered into new commercial partnerships with Zagat, Bravo, Conde Nast, The New York Times and several other firms to offer tips, specials and new badges to followers.[37][38][39]
Foursquare acknowledged a grass-roots effort that started in Tampa, Florida [40] by declaring April 16 as a "Foursquare Day".[41][42]
In February 2010, a site known as Please Rob Me was launched.[49] Please Rob Me scrapes data from public Twitter messages that have been pushed through foursquare.[49] The purpose of the site is to raise awareness about revealing too much information.[49]
In 2010, white hat hacker Jesper Andersen discovered a vulnerability on foursquare that raised privacy concerns.[50][51] foursquare's location pages display a grid of 50 pictures that is generated randomly, regardless of their privacy settings.[50] Whenever a user "checks-in" at that location, their picture is generated on that location page, even if they only want their friends to know where they are.[50] Andersen then crafted a script that collected check-in information.[50] It is estimated that Andersen collected around 875,000 check-ins.[50] Andersen contacted foursquare about the vulnerability, and foursquare responded by fixing their privacy settings.[51]
Also in 2010, issues arose for users who use Twitter to check in at locations, which are connected to Foursquare; specifically for those who have not disabled the option that shows when you are at a certain place – raising the issue of "who are you with" and "who are you not with" on foursquare. These privacy concerns can be avoided if people a) don’t connect their Twitter names to their foursquare profiles or b) don’t allow themselves to be listed as checked in at any particular place. [52]
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is currently urging the White House to increase Internet privacy measures, especially for mobile devices and social networks, stating that federal laws have not kept up with the applications to ensure that personal information isn’t being improperly used. [53]
Further discussion is currently going on with the FTC and the type of information that could be tracked online. According to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, said several companies such as Microsoft and Mozilla have done a good job of putting tools on their browsers to allow users to voluntarily opt out of being tracked on the Web. But he said that without “baseline privacy protections” across the Web industry, consumers will face a patchwork of privacy policies that could differ Web site by Web site. Also, “Do Not Track is no longer just a concept. It is becoming a reality,” Leibowitz said at the hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee. “An effective Do Not Track system would go beyond simply opting consumers out of receiving targeted advertisements. It would opt them out of having their behavior tracked online.” This can be an issue with the future of foursquare, as well as other social networking website devices that track users information. [53]
In response to the privacy issues regarding social networking sites, foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai states that "Users decide if they want to push to Twitter or Facebook, over what information they want to share and send" and "There is a lot of misunderstanding about location based services. On foursquare, if you don’t want to people to know you are on a date or with a friend at a certain place, then you don’t have to let people know. You don’t check in." Selvadurai also states that foursquare does not passively track users, which means a user has to actively check in to let people know where they are. In the future, foursquare also does not plan on being a passive tracking, using GPS and other technology to constantly find location of users.[54]
foursquare updated their privacy policy on Jan 12, 2011. It can be found on their website.[55]
Mobile Commerce Framework Inc filed a lawsuit against foursquare on March 10, 2011, for infringing on their US Patent No. U.S. Patent 7,693,752 (subscription-based system for providing commerce information).[56]
A research project called "Factoid" of the former Digital Equipment Corporation Western Research Laboratories (WRL), led by Bob Mayo had similar though, "hush" concept of gathering information. See [1].