Play Foursquare!

04.21.09 | Dork, Web | Comments (6)

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of helping Maddie attempt to be the King of Seattle. Inspired by the week’s previous King, Maddie decided to give it a go and I decided to support her. The title of King is awarded every Monday at 12am to the winner of that week’s foursquare competition.

foursquare is a location aware webapp for your phone that awards points for various activities that involve going out & about. The reason I “play” is because it gets me out of the house and acts as a great friend-finder. Alice Tiara just posted a great write-up of what makes the game interesting:

For example, on Monday night, I went to dinner with a friend. After dinner, I saw that two of my closest friends were at a local bar. We met them there, and over the course of the next four hours, about 10 other people showed up, all of whom found us through foursquare.

For people worried about privacy, don’t worry; you only check in when you want to be found and only tell who you want to. The more places you go, the more points you get; and if you’re creative with it, you can rack up the points. Here are some tips that I’ve come up with that will help you to be the King of your burg:

• Only check in at new locations:
  You get 5 points for every new location checkin and zero points if it is a duplicate checkin within the week
• Rack up bar-hopping bonus points:
  You get a travel bonus point for every subsequent checkin during the night (after 4pm). I.E. 6 points for first unique checkin, 7 for second, 8 for third, 9 for fourth, etc.
• 7-Day Bender:
  Start the Tuesday before your championship run and hit a place each night. By the time the next Monday hits the starting line, you’ll get 7 “Bender” points for the first time you check in each night.
• If you’re bar-hopping, drink a pony glass of a dry stout:
  You could just not buy anything, but that’d be shady. Buy something that has nutrients, like a Guinness. Otherwise, you’ll succumb to alcohol madness (or so I’m told).
• Mind games:
  If your score is within striking range, people *will* compete with you.
  • Either come out of the gate on Monday and establish such a daunting lead that people won’t attempt to compete, or
  • Pull an eBay – Stay just below the top 5 for most of the week so that you’re not noticed, then swoop in on the weekend to claim the crown.

Part of playing a game is the necessity of agreed upon rules. foursquare doesn’t have any defined rules at this point, other than “Don’t lie about where you are,” and even that isn’t very defined. In an effort to get people playing under the same rules, I would suggest something along the lines of the following (please alter or append any of these in the comments):

• Must have intent to stay at a checked in location longer than 30 min.
• The checked-in location must be a public place.
• The checked-in location must be someplace in which you are capable of being social. (i.e. Not @ your coffee shop job or while running errands)
• Strong suggestion you buy from the establishment if it is a bar/restaurant.

The rules would only be necessary if you’re interested in competing in foursquare. You can still get use out of foursquare, even if you’re not competing for Kinghood. I would suggest that competing is opt-in for users who’ve read “the rules” as defined and agreed upon by the userbase (ticket).

Other ideas for foursquare that would make me dork out:

• Allow users to optionally enter home address and places of work – I’d love to let people know when I’m at home and at work, but don’t want to collect points for these locations. (ticket)
• Mayoral voice – Give the mayor of a venue the ability to write a welcome message when a user checks in at their location. (ticket)
• On the users “History” page, show which users who were also checked in with you when you visited. I’d love this page to act as my social diary. (ticket)
• Add the ability to optionally display your Twitter username. There have been times in which I’d wished I was able to communicate with another user, but couldn’t. (ticket)

All this being said, this only works when you have friends using it. I’d have a lot more serendipitous moments if I had more friends playing the game with me…