Get Outta My Head

Back during UFC 100 I was introduced to a fairly new application by someone I consider to be a celebrity in the Twitter world. (won’t drop names).  We chatted briefly before the event and Twitter was mentioned.  I felt proud at that time to say I had around 3K in tweets but felt way behind when he said he had about 10k.  (Again, local celebrity.)  The application that I was introduced to was Foursquare.  It took me pretty much until I got home to have myself excited enough to pass on this new app to any friend that would listen.  Remember, this was a time when Twitter was still new to most of the world out there and most friends were just now beginning to catch on, which made the convincing of “some other new thing” tough.  I did get a few friends to become my “friend” on Foursquare and now I had a purpose for checking in… To beat my friends.  I began to check in everywhere.  If the venue wasn’t found, I would create it.  Starbucks… Created!  Zipps… Created!  I became the Mayor here and the Mayor there, badges were coming in and I didn’t know what I did to get them.  It was a lot of new fun.

BAM, what’s that? You now can get something special if you are the Mayor of a location?  What locations are doing this?  I am a mayor of about 15 places but nobody is showing they have a special.  *google search* Hmm, they all seem to be somewhere outside of the state.  We need to fix this!  Why aren’t businesses using Foursquare?

BAM + a few months, what’s that?  Starbucks is now offering a special if you are the Mayor of a location?  Shoot, I am the Mayor of my Starbucks, let’s do this!  Within 2 weeks from that point I had lost my mayorship.  I gained it back a few times but lost it for good awhile ago.  My pride was shattered. (not really)

This is where Foursquare started to become much more well-known.  My 15-20 mayorships sunk to about 5 and those were mine because I own the locations. Specials were no longer unique and you could see that your current location had about 3 specials nearby.  Cool stuff but 2 of those 3 were either a link to print out a coupon or spend $100 to get 5% off.  Who cares.  Even still, some businesses were starting to see the light but most were lost in the dark.

I started Get Outta My Head for those lost in the dark.  Foursquare was just one of the tools that I introduced to businesses that I wanted to represent and was by far my favorite.  Sure we saw Gowalla look amazing, we have seen SCVNGR have its great gaming side and we saw Whrrl with the best reward system I have seen come to challenge Foursquare.

Now its a year later and Gowalla still looks amazing, SCVNGR is still fun, Whrrl has gone away and the noobs like Foursquare Places and Google Latitude just seem to suck.  And as for Foursquare, it still rules.

I truly believe that Foursquare is The Next Big Deal.  Some of the experiments that use Foursquare and its check in abilities just make the gears in my mind crank.  I would love to have the ability to code and create some of these ideas but until then I can only imagine.  So when I see a new platform or concept that incorporates a better, more capable version of the small spark of idea that I had in my mind come alive.  It just reaffirms my feelings.  Foursquare is not just about checking in, not anymore.  It’s not just about specials to drive people to your storefront, it never really was.  It’s about more!  It’s about knowing your patrons.  It’s about taking care of your customers.  And it’s about them knowing that you know that they are there.  It’s Social Media.