For those who aren’t clued into the newest “big thing” on the internet (No not chatroulette you perv), Foursquare is a way for users to “check-in” at locations and broadcast (if they choose) to their friends about where they’ve been. If Twitter’s ultimate question is “What are you doing?” then Foursquare’s is “Where are you doing it?”

One of my favorite aspects of Foursquare is the “mayorships.” You become the Mayor of a location by checking into that spot more then anybody else. As I was the only friend of mine who used Foursquare regularly, I was the top dog in all of our local hangouts. At more public locations (banks, stores, restaurants) your mayorship can always be in jeopardy. Nothing is worse then getting a notification that so-and-so is the new leader of your bank drive-thru kingdom. (okay, there are a lot of worse things, but it is pretty traumatic.)

I found myself going out of my way to defend my mayorships from challengers. Going to banks that were further away, choosing where I eat lunch based off if I was keeping a mayor spot or stealing one away. The back and forth is exciting.

Foursquare currently provides several “badges” or little awards for certain accomplishments such as checking into new places, or checking in with friends. I think they should add several new badges that encourage people to compete directly against other users for Mayor recognition. Here are some of my ideas:

Conquerer - Steal away at least two mayorships within 24 hours.
We Must Defend This House – Regain a mayorship after losing it within 24 hours.
Arch Nemesis – Steal away five mayorships from the same user.
Pacifist – Have five mayorships stolen from you.
Lonely At the Top - Be a mayor of a location with at least 5+ checkins with no other users checking in once.

Just a couple… I think the best part of Foursquare is earning badges, and I’ve reached a point where there aren’t many left for me to (realistically) achieve… I would be thrilled to see more reasons to check-in.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 1:04 pm and is filed under multimedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.