The Art of the Checkin: From Location to Content to Brand →

Great article from Mashable about checking in and your online identity!

How Foursquare Reaches Consumers and What it Means for Businesses

            The web landscape, particularly in the sector of social media platforms, is extremely dynamic and ever evolving. Social Media templates are changing, and quickly at that. As one blogger mentions, the question prompts on the home pages of these websites have become increasingly personal. Facebook asks elusively, “What’s on your mind?”, while Twitter asks, more transparently, “What are you doing?”, while Foursquare asks, in a tone one might presumptuously interpret as invasive, “Where are you?”  

Foursquare, a mobile GPS-style interactive map that synchs your location to mainstream social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, facilitates a new and more personalized medium through which one can communicate to his/her social cloud.  Because the mobile phone is as strong as the computer in this technological era, there is no chance Foursquare will fade in popularity or usage. Businesses have hopped on board the Foursquare bandwagon, further strengthening and maintaining their prevalence on the web landscape. Through Foursquare, managers can see who is checking in: taking into account attributes such as what age group or demographic to which their consumer belongs, and during what time of day they enter their store.  Essentially, they are able to see the metrics of their consumer in the most accessible way possible.