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Over the past few weeks, I have been using a new app on my iPhone called “Foursquare.”  Foursquare is a form of communication in which you and your friends can explore your city or town.  There have been many attempts to this before, Brightkite, Loopt, and Yelp to name a few.  For some reason or another, Foursquare has been the one that has stuck.  At first, I thought this app was quite useless, but after some thinking, I think it could provide us a new way of thinking in terms of social media and the way we communicate.

At face value, the user checks in at a venue, and you can earn badges or become the Foursquare mayor, after the user checks in so many places so many times.  Seems pretty lame, right?  Well, I think there is a larger message behind this service.  Every time you stop at a cafe or a bar, you have the option to check in at your current location.  You can put your house on FourSquare, or the Laundromat, but the focus is primarily on going out.  You can find out if some of your friends are in the same area and meet up with them.

You are probably thinking, “Well, this is STILL pretty lame, Bryant. You live in Houghton, Michigan, and there is no need to mark where you are in a town of 10,000 people. ”  Maybe this all seems lame to you, but I think structured datasets such as those being collected by Foursquare are going to become highly effective resources for cost-per-action advertising.  Businesses could use Foursquare as an advertising platform for Foursquare to make money, and in return, businesses can learn what they are doing right, or what they are doing wrong, by how often people are returning, or a tip they provide.

The more popular Foursquare becomes, the more useful of a service it will be to each user.  Like Twitter, Foursquare provides us the ability to let our voice be heard.  If we hate a coffee shop, or love a restaurant, Foursquare provides one central location where our voice can be heard.  I’m sure, just like Twitter, once celebrities find a use in this new social media platform, this will be another technological phenomenon that will actually be good for American businesses, and stroke the egos of us everyday users, knowing that our favorite celebrity or our best friend has stepped foot in the same place at one point or another.  Watch out, because I do think this is the new social media phenomenon.