Why I Love foursquare (And How You Can Too)

Matt Kiser Loves Foursquare

I resisted foursquare for a long time. I didn’t really care about badges or mayorships. It didn’t strike me as a particularly interesting way to record the places you’d been, and it was too difficult to extract that info at a later time. There wasn’t a rich community of friends or conversation. The idea of getting deals, or specials, seemed neat, but it was still too difficult and often overly complicated. It was quickly dismissed from my iPhone (twice!) as just another thing I wasn’t going to waste time updating.

That was until I realized the point. And forgive me for this sounding remedial, but foursquare works in two ways: 1) the more you put into foursquare, the more you get out. Especially since the recently released feature, Radar. And, 2) foursquare is a lot like Twitter in that you don’t necessarily need to tweet in order to extract value. In this case, you don’t need to check in to use the “explore” feature for recommendations, but it helps.

Let me explain the first point: Add your real friends on foursquare. Then add some brands like Time Out New York, which curate tons of “best of” lists. Speaking of lists, follow some lists, and add places to your personal to-do list. Check in at places you like to go to (e.g. don’t waste time checking in at the laundromat, but do check into your favorite coffee shop). Turn on Radar. Done.

See, what I didn’t realize about foursquare was that once you reach a threshold of places you’ve checked into (both in terms of quantity as well as diversity), and places you’ve explicitly added to your to-do list, you’ve created an amazingly rich graph about who you are and what you like.

The recommendations get really good at that point. Foursquare has become everything I wish Yelp was. The recommendations are fantastic. I’ve found a ton of places I wouldn’t have normally gone to. The tips keep you hip to what to get/try/avoid. Oh, and there is a certain barrier to entry with foursquare that keeps the spam out (I believe the use of real identities is super important when it comes to recommendations).

I really like their Radar feature. Once you turn that on and you have your friends and lists, it’s always a nice surprise to get a little notification on my iPhone that reminds me that I actually want to stop by certain businesses when I’m in their area. It’s like I have a sidekick. Who doesn’t want a sidekick?

But if you don’t want to to go through the trouble to do all of that, you can still fire up foursquare and check out the recommendations. They’ll just be a little less personal.

Here are a few lists I created to help you make sense of the world:

Enjoy.