London says welcome to Foursquare!

Mass excitment in the 33 Digital office today as it was announced that Foursquare had launched in London. As CNet reported:

“Through a tweet, Foursquare announced that it will be bringing the service to London this week. This is Foursquare’s second European city. Amsterdam was first, but London is a whole different animal. London is the top Twitter-using city in the world, so people may be open to a new social service like Foursquare.”

We’ve written about Foursquare before on the 33 Digital blog and Drew Benvie covered it in the run up to launch way back at the beginning of August, but if you’re not sure what all the fuss is about, here’s an explanation from Foursqaure itself:

Hi there! Ready to learn about what foursquare can do for you?

#1. Find Your Friends!

If you tell us where you are, we can tell you which of your friends are nearby. We call this “checking-in”. You can check-in from a park, bar, museum, restaura nt, whatever.

#2. Points and Badges!

Every check-in earns you points! Interesting check-ins earn you badges. The more you explore, the more you unlock… you’ll see.

#3. Explore the City!

* Think “urban mix tape”. We made a little system that allows you to track all the cool things to do in London – both the things you’ve done (your “Top 12″) and the things you want to do (your “To-Do” list).

I’ve been playing a lot with it this morning (you can find me as @benrmatthews) and enjoyed the experience so far. It’s one of those services that will truly come to life once all of your friends are on it, especially on nights out as people ‘check in’ at a bar and you can then find them and join them.

I can also see it being useful for events, where you can check in and find other people at the event that you weren’t aware were attending.

I suspect we’ll also see some innovative uses of the platform once it reaches a mass audience, or gets popular within the tech and new media spaces anyway. Think about the possibility of shops, bars and restaraunts giving special discounts to the Foursquare mayors of their venue.

It’s also going to be fun finding out how to unlock those badges and become mayor or certain popular destinations. I’ve claimed 33 Digital’s offices and our favourite coffee shop as my first check-ins. It can’t be long before I become mayor of them and I’m hoping that it will give me some kind of special powers as a result!

Update

Just spotted an interesting article over on TechCrunch UK that explores the privacy issues around Foursquare, partcularly how it can’t control broadcasting personal addresses to the whole community. I raised similar concerns last month and Joyce covers the issues well here.

It seems that Foursquare needs to sort its privacy issues out before it earns the trust of the London community.

Also posted on www.puddingrelations.com