Foursquare is one of the most popular location based services on the net. The service already boasts of about ten million users. Recently Foursquare announced its latest offering for brands – new self-serve business pages.
This means that now any publication, organization or firm can develop its own Foursquare page, check-in, get followers, share tips and get in touch with the fans. The new option offers a number of business-friendly features. Brands can reach the huge Foursquare community with their check-ins and tips. Promoting their check-ins on popular social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook can further increase their reach.
The business pages will be featured in Foursquare Pages Gallery. The new offering comes with a cool new tool, which can be very useful for big brands. It enables brands to appoint multiple Page managers to allow them all to contribute to the business page. Brands are likely to attract many more followers, if their check-ins and tips are accompanied by suitable photos.
Now brands can easily add photos through the web or even via mobile phones. According to the official Foursquare post, around 3000 brands have already created business pages. But a look at the Page Gallery indicates low engagement factor for many pages. Even the X Games page shows low engagement rates, although the event took place recently.
Today location based services are not as popular as they used to be. People have already forgotten Foursquare competitors like Gowalla. This makes one wonder whether a service like Foursquare is really relevant for company internet marketing.