By now we are all used to being able to see who is doing what and when they are doing it, it’s the social media revolution don’t you know! But what is the next step? Some critics say the current social networks won’t be around forever and that they will kill themselves off but there is a new craze taking the social networking world by (a very mild) storm.
There is no question that Facebook is the biggest social media network around with over 350 million unique users with over 20 million added in the last 30 days. This is a huge resource for businesses and marketers and has created a stream of revenue for many but there are some fundamental issues Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, needs to address; Primarily ensuring a consistent revenue plan as many applications available allow users to access their accounts without viewing any of the adverts, mainly Facebook mobile. As long as issues like these are addressed Facebook will stand the test of evolution, being the fittest and surviving as a result. However there is a new feature that has emerged as a result of the popularity of GPS-enabled smartphones, Geo-Social-Networking.
Mobile web access has revolutionised the web and the market it provides, smartphones are now equipped with GPS as standard and its likely that within the next few years this is standard on some of the cheapest of handsets. With GPS comes the ability to Geo-tag anything, take a picture and post it on Flickr and anyone in the world can see exactly where that picture was taken. This option is expanding to twitter but there is a couple of dedicated location based networks.
Foursquare is a new and unique network, it does not require a user to create yet another online profile, it links directly to your twitter feed or Facebook page. It allows you to ‘check in’ at any location as long as you have a mobile signal. Its developers cunningly left the discovery of locations up to its users, allowing you to create a venue if nobody has been there before. This way, with minimal effort, it is a user powered network with very little management needed.
Checking in to a venue more than anyone else will earn a user its ‘mayorship’ and there are similar bonuses for actively using the service. This encourages use and ensures people will use their mobile in a particular location, something no other service has been able to do so far.
Users can leave tips for other users in any given location, for example leaving a tip about the best food to order in a restaurant or the best drinks deal in a bar. This is entirely user based for the time being but the opportunity is there for businesses to leave tips or advice and there is rumour that Foursquare will sell advertising space in certain locations. This is a further step in targeted marketing which will allow organisations to narrow their budget and avoid wasted advertising.
Foursquare proved massively popular on the first day of its release with over 350,000 check-ins and thousands of new users. It has been growing rapidly since which begs the question “when will Foursquare cash in on what they offer?”