Foursquare: the new recommendation engine

Foursquare will undergo its revolution this week. The famous “check-in” service will indeed offer a major overhaul of its mobile application, which will focus on discovering new places rather than the user registration in specific locations. This feature, which made the fortune of Foursquare with its famous badge system and “Mayorship” is increasingly neglected even if the service recognizes 2 billion check-ins and over 20 million users since its launch in 2009.

Foursquare will evolve to a recommendation engine, with a layer of networking. A function of passive localization to notice you of interesting places will be integrated, while a history will allow you to find your previous discoveries; Foursquare will also compete with Yelp with a recommendation system for restaurants. Everything will take place through a detailed map where you will see the hottest points of interest, while viewing the affiliated businesses. Foursquare 2.0 will appear this week in all the apps stores.

Meshu turns your check-ins into unique jewelry !

As we noted throughout this blog: Foursquare may become a powerful tool for companies that do not hesitate to use it in their marketing campaign or to develop new business concepts. However, one of the last things that you might expect with Foursquare is that jewelry can be designed based on your check-ins! It is certainly not an official product from Foursquare, but another service called Meshu.

So how does this work?

You must first import your check-ins into Meshu database, which will then create unique patterns depending on the places you visited. These places are represented by dots and are interconnected through straight lines (as shown below), which will ensure you to have a very unique jewelry!

Next step: the designs are printed in 3D and are finally available for sale as necklaces, earrings, cufflinks that will cost you between $75 and $150, depending on the choice of material used. This is certainly a unique and creative way to keep track of your passage during special events (bachelor party, graduation party, pub crawl, etc..) or just the places you used to visit regularly and you want to keep track before moving to another country? Whatever the reasons and routes if you want to make your own custom jewelry or for more information, I invite you to visit the official website: www.meshu.io

Owners can now instantly “verify” their companies on Foursquare

Foursquare has announced the launch of a paid service that allows owners to “claim“, without waiting, for the name and details of their company on the location-based social network. An authentication tool designed to prevent from the spoofing of places by non-legitimate users and with a view to facilitate the implementation of businesses’ promotional activities on the network.

To verify a business on Foursquare, the owners will have to proceed in three steps. The procedure needs to be connected to Foursquare with a user account: after finding their company page on Foursquare, they will see displayed the message: “Do you manage this place? Claim it.”, thus allowing them to make a quick request.

Checking via e-mail or phone

The verification can be done by phone or e-mail for one or more locations (beyond 10 places, it is necessary to fill out a form). Foursquare states it cost $10 on its official blog. “Then you can begin to offer special deals and learn more about your customers,” according to Foursquare.
The verification by mail can still be done for free but will take three to four weeks.

This new feature will be available in the USA first, and internationally very soon.

What other features for businesses would you like to see on Foursquare?

What businesses are the “mayors” in France ?

Mikaël Posty, a French Foursquare ambassador and community manager, has been gathering information concerning the top brands mayors, top locations and also brands notoriety since late 2011. I invite you to follow him on his twitter @MikaelDorian .The document was released in mid-April 2012.

As we can see:
- the top brand mayor is the French luxury fasion house LOUIS VUITTON, with nearly 190k followers
- the top mayor city is Toulouse, located in the south of France. It is stated that Foursquare is more developped in this part of France.
- the top mayor on the politics field is the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his party, the UMP
- the top mayor in the transportation domain is the Airports of Paris, followed by the National French Rail Company
- the strongest presence on Foursquare is attributed to the French global banking group BNP Paribas, which is the largest bank & company in the world

Foursquare and Politics

In the second round of the 2012 French presidential election, the actual president and candidate Nicolas Sarkozy launched a Foursquare operation to attract potential electors to its campaign venue. All the users that check-in at Nicolas Sarkozy’s venue were offered “Carla and Nicolas” limited series of “petit sables” (French traditional cake). Within a few hours, already 439 check-ins were posted.

 

What do you think of this social media campaign?