Foursquare

The application of Foursquare is another alternative among the social networking options in the Internet. It allows you can add comments, recommendations or warnings about all the places of interest that you visit.

You can keep track of the places that you have visited and the number of times you have been there. Also, you gain access to special offers and promotions for users in certain bars or stores and the whole network have access to this information resulting in a rich source of p2p reference on places to go.

By tagging a place a user gains special points for further promotional purposes. If a user has the highest number of tags in any given place, then this person becomes the mayor and this allows him to obtain network recognition and special promotions as well.

To use this application only is required a cell phone and download the specific Foursquare application.

In my opinion its business model focus in building a valuable network of users with specific patterns of behavior and preference in terms of social and leisure activities.

Also the data gathered from all the users about any given place can be attractive to the owner of a business who may be willing to pay to have access to this network for marketing and sales purposes among others. Business owners or managers of places where a significant number of users have given opinions or recommendations are willing to receive the general and specific feedback from their customers.

Furthermore, business can offer special marketing strategies to its current and potential customers to gain their attention and persuade them to return to their business. For example to get one beer free when you buy one and showing that promotion to the bartender.

In the end, Foursquare offers an interesting application that its users can use to find their friends and meet new people while discovering new places to go around any city and choose among them in terms of location, recommendation, affinity or any personal preferences based on first hand insights from previous users.