Foursquare Signing Mainstream Partnership Deals Left And Right
Posted on 09 February 2010 by mybrandonline
Foursquare continues to sign interesting deals with major players in a wide range of fields. Following the service’s Bravo deal a couple weeks ago, they’ve reached a deal with restaurant rating guide Zagat, according to The New York Times. And AdAge has some details about deals with even more partners, including HBO, Warner Brothers, and the History Channel.
The service has been on a roll lately. They’re now seeing over a million check-ins a week, with that rate doubling in the last month alone. And these new deals can only help them as they bring the type of mainstream appeal that it took services like Twitter so long to find.
While Zagat is an obvious partner thanks to its restaurante recommendations, the entertainment partnership appeal may not be immediately apparent. But as you can see on the Foursquare page for the movie Valentine’s Day, those promoting the movie have added 50 “Romantic Tips” around the cities that the movie takes place in, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. Any Foursquare user that checks-in at one of these places will unlock a special badge for the movie.
The new HBO show, How To Make It In America, meanwhile, has four special badges that you can unlock: Culture, Living, Cocktails, and Nightlife. Each of these is obtained by visiting venues from the show.
And the Zagat deal is interesting in that it goes beyond simply offering food and restaurant recommendations. The service plans to have a weekly web video series entitled “Meet The Mayor” in which they interview the Foursquare “mayor” of a restaurant in their guide.
Another deal that Foursquare recently signed was with Harvard.
These types of deals are crucial to Foursquare not only because they point to an eventual money-making opportunity, but also because they give the service a way to fend off attacks from Yelp (which just launched a check-in feature on its own iPhone app), and soon Facebook. Meanwhile, these deals give brands a fun way to interact with the public. It’s advertising, but it’s interactive.
Now Foursquare just has to solve that douchebag problem…
View full post on TechCrunch
Tags | Deals, Foursquare, Left, Mainstream, Partnership, Right, Signing
This is all great but where’s the social engagement and sustainability?
LOL LOL LOL! u got it @Din mor!!
Hi, what’s up? I am looking for a date on Valentine’s Day my profile @ http://bit.ly/cqd0a2
good points.
MG.. If you hurry up and do a post about iPad, your quota for FourSquare and Apple for today is all done. End is in sight!
Another reason these deals are smart for Foursquare: Users will get accustomed to seeing sponsors in the app, and Foursquare will be able to monetize without the backlash that Twitter is facing because they were sponsor/advertising free for so long.
As long as the sponsorships continue to add value to the service, they are a win for three reasons:
1. The partners help to promote Foursquare, which helps to increase its mainstream appeal.
2. Foursquare gains credibility by working with larger, big name brands.
3. Brands can experiment with geo-location in a non-intrusive way and figure out what works and what doesn’t in this new medium.
dilute douchebags
I bet MG popped more than his collar with that last line.