(c) 2010 foursquare

I’m starting to check out foursquare to determine its business value. Foursquare is an iPhone mobile application (BlackBerry beta app now available too) that lets users share their whereabouts as they travel. The “Learn More” page on the app’s Web site explains its usefulness in further detail.

I’m a pessimist to some degree on geo-location apps. It’s mostly a privacy thing for me – as in I don’t want to wear a cowbell that transmits my every move (albeit with foursquare and most social apps a share-what-you-want with whom-you-want approach guards some of these concerns). But it’s a relevancy thing too – as in you don’t really care what I had for lunch, just like hardly any of us did when we first got on Twitter.

You might, however, be interested in where I ate lunch if you live in or visit Phoenix, Arizona. Better yet, you might value searching the aggregated preferences and advice of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who have recently dined, worked, played and lodged in Phoenix. Still better, establishments you frequent might want to reward your loyalty and incent more visits.

Of course we already have apps like Urban Spoon and Yelp (which now also lets users “check in“) for much of this, so how can tools like foursquare and Gowalla build upon the utility of location awareness to benefit Cindy Citizen and Bob The Brander? I asked some friends and forward thinkers to enlighten me. My thanks to all of them, and here’s what they shared…

Jay Baer, social media strategy consultant, Convince & Convert

Whereas Twitter recently added the option to tag tweets with geo-location (a feature utilized by a scant few twitterers), foursquare and Gowalla are inherently geo-aware, because they reside on mobile applications and use GPS to “tag” locations. This has widespread potential.

I think real value will come when foursquare and Gowalla are tied into Facebook and Twitter, and destination check-ins from members show up on the social radar of larger groups of “friends.”

The mid-term potential for these services is something entirely different. They allow a physical place to “be” social, just like a person. A restaurant, bowling alley, insurance agency, theatre. All of them can now interact with people using these check-in services, including providing just-in-time coupons, incentives, and so forth.

Already, organizations are starting to build semi-custom implementations that use the base foursquare and Gowalla services as a platform (like Facebook) rather than as a free-standing application. What Harvard University is doing with foursquare, encouraging students to interact with campus locations and leave notes, compete for prizes, etc. is the direction this is heading.

It’s a bit hard to get your head around at first, but being able to be “friends” with locations as well as people could be a social media game-changer.

Brandon Zeuner, startup advisor and managing partner with Venture51

I agree with not wanting everyone to know where I am, so I presently keep a handful of friends on foursquare and similar services I evaluate. The “mayorship” aspect of foursquare caught my attention early on. I witnessed foursquare dictating where people wanted to meet with me for business so they could maintain their mayoral status at those locations. This is ego-based behavior, yet could be powerful from a marketing sense if used appropriately.

Location-based services are the future of mobility because they are functional on very local levels. For instance, I was eating at Uncle Sam’s in Phoenix and received an offer from Sweet Republic, a nearby ice cream shop, to redeem within a couple hours. This is a simple example of mobile at its best because, as a consumer, it’s serving me offers that I’m double-opting or qualifying myself for based on 1) the use of foursquare on my iPhone in the first place and 2) the actions I take (redeeming a digital coupon in this case) at specific locations.

Provided by Brandon Zeuner

Authenticity is something to consider too. Foursquare users can cheat to some degree since it is not presently GPS based – claiming they’re one place when they’re really somewhere else and thus gaming the system for mayorship of a location. With Gowalla, users have to be several meters within an establishment’s door to have their check-ins validated.

Yelp is still the biggest player for location-based service with about 1.25 million iPhone app users, yet it would be easy for Facebook to build similar functionality and roll over some of these apps with smaller user bases. Anyway, maintaining multiple location-based applications is a pain for general users so it will be interesting to see how these aspects of mobility grow and potentially consolidate.

Greg Head, strategic marketing consultant for CEOs of emerging companies, New Avenue

I think right now foursquare is a practical way to see what friends tell other friends (and Twitter) where they are. It’s clear that there is some social benefit to sharing your location with your network and seeing “who else I know is here too.”

I do think this precedes the huge opportunity for local promotion by retailers that promote offers to their loyal visitors and to visitors who promote the retailer’s location. I don’t know that this will turn into one combined foursquare/Yelp/Twitter/Facebook app that combines our location, network and location into one system. Facebook has a shot at it.

Ed Kless, senior director of partner development and strategy, Sage North America

My initial experience with foursquare was quite interesting. I loaded it the day before going on a business trip. While at the airport, the tips based on my location pointed me to a new place for lunch at an airport that I had been to dozens of times. While checking into my hotel I also was informed that one of our business partners who is also on foursquare was at the same hotel. So I went to dinner with him rather than eating in my room.

A couple of initial ways businesses could use foursquare come to mind. One of the more obvious would be to give the foursquare mayor of your establishment some kind of special privileges such as preferred pricing or bonus goods or services. Another is to develop a foursquare badge for your company. While there is nothing on the foursquare site for doing this, I would imagine this would be an excellent revenue opportunity for them to sell this as a service to companies.

The Fire Brigade on foursquare

And here’s some bonus perspective from Paul Armstrong’s “Fire Brigade” a virtual panel of PR professionals offering weekly opinions and advice about “drinking from the social media fire hose” on PR Week’s UK blog. Foursquare happens to be Paul’s chosen topic this week so have a look at the discussion thread for additional perspectives.

Have you tried foursquare, or do you plan to? Is it fueling you with foresight, or leaving you a bit forlorn?