History of Foursquare

Foursquare is a location-based social networking website based on software for mobile devices. This service is available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by running the application and selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes "badges".

The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball as his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. Google bought Dodgeball in 2005 and shut it down in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude. Dodgeball user interactions were based on SMS technology, rather than an application.

Foursquare is the second iteration of the same idea, that people can use mobile devices to interact with their environment. As of April 2011, the company reported it had 8 million registered users.

Features

Foursquare is a web and mobile application that allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location. Points are awarded for "checking in" at venues. Users can choose to have their check-ins posted on their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or both. In version 1.3 of their iPhone application, foursquare enabled push-notification of friend updates, which they call "Pings". Users can also earn badges by checking in at locations with certain tags, for check-in frequency, or for other patterns such as time of check-in. The company has stated that users will be able to add their own custom badges to the site in the future.

Users can create a "To Do" list for their private use and add "Tips" to venues that other users can read, which serve as suggestions for great things to do, see or eat at the location.

Mayorship

If a user has checked-in to a venue on more days (meaning only one check-in per day qualifies for calculating mayorship) than anyone else in the past 60 days, the check-ins are valid under foursquare's time and distance protocols, and they have a profile photo, they will be crowned "Mayor" of that venue, until someone else earns the title by checking in more times than the previous mayor. On August 26, 2010, foursquare rolled out a new feature which notifies users of the number of days left before he or she is crowned "Mayor". When a user "checks in" to a venue on Foursquare via a mobile app, if he or she is within 10 check-ins of becoming the mayor, foursquare alerts the user of the days left before becoming mayor on the check-in confirmation screen.

Badges

Badges are earned by checking into various venues. Some cities have city-specific badges that can only be earned in a specific city. Foursquare has, however, changed the way they handle badges, and now when a user gains a badge, he or she has the same badges across all cities. Once a badge is earned by a player, it will remain on that user's profile indefinitely.

The foursquare staff are very secretive about how to unlock many badges. There are a handful of introductory badges that are earned as milestones in usage. Some badges are tied to venue "tags" and the badge earned depends on the tags applied to the venue. Other badges may be specific to a city, venue, event, or date. Some badges use identical icons, but are earned differently. There are a few badges that are named similarly, but applied differently, specifically Far Far Away, Trifecta, and I'm on a Boat. There is no official foursquare badge list available from foursquare.com, yet a few start up companies have tried to keep up-to-date the lists.

On September 23, 2010, foursquare announced that users can now earn badges for completing tasks as well as checking in. On October 22, 2010, astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock unlocked the NASA Explorer badge by checking into Foursquare from the International Space Station.