Foursquare spreads to Nokia through 3rd Party App

Already available on the iPhone, Android & Blackberry in native applications. Foursquare is being spread to other mobile platforms through third party developers, a strong benefit of having an open API. A Windows Mobile variant is being developed and now too one for Maemo, the OS favored by the Nokia family of phones, in particular the N900.

Maemo is a very powerful mobile platform and on the N900 provides an impressive array of features. Bringing the Social nature of Foursquare to this platform is a good move.

This variant is called BarrioSquare, it is currently in Private Beta but we were given a look ahead of the release later this month. Developed by Chilitech, it would be familiar to any current users of Foursquare on a mobile device. As you can see from the screenshots below:

I do like the 9 tips screen, not something I have seen on the Blackberry version of Foursquare.

The N900 is placed by those in the know as a “tweener”, more than a phone, less than a tablet. It almost fits in the MID (Mobile Internet Device) category. The N900 already runs Mobile Firefox and has been seen to be capable of running the MAC OS X. Bringing Foursquare to this device, given its user profile is a smart move, even if it is through a third party developer.

Foursquare Signs Media Deals

Foursquare has announced two media deals in the past week. The first was with Metro, the number one free newspaper in North America, which is also widely distributed across the globe. The deal will see Metro content published as tips shown to users of the service when they check-in at various locations. Initially the Metro deal is just for Canada, but it would be reasonable to expect to see this roll-out across the rest of the Metro coverage areas.

The second deal is with TV company Bravo. This is an extremely smart move on the part of Foursquare and clearly places them well ahead of their competitor services. The deal goes live on Feb 1st and will see Bravo celebrities sharing their tips for various locations. In addition Bravo will be offering badges and prizes for users that check-in at over 500 Bravo tagged locations.

Ellen Stone, Bravo’s senior vice president of marketing, told the New York Times that:

“We really want to tap into the power of Foursquare by engaging their audiences and bringing our Bravo viewers these unique experiences on a national level … We saw the Foursquare phenomenon taking off and we wanted to go along with them as they shoot into the mainstream … Our audiences is always looking for new and unique engagements and this is perfect for them.”

With the TV company putting its bandwidth behind Foursquare, we can expect to see various mentions of Foursquare throughout the Bravo programming schedule.

David Armano SVP at Edelman Digital asked the question yesterday on Twitter. Its a good question and it will make for an interesting answer. Even with $8.5m in investment it will be hard for Gowalla to catch Foursquare now.

Foursquare

I’ve been using the mobile location service Foursquare for sometime now.  From a user perspective Foursquare appears, on the surface, to be nothing more than a game. Check-in more times than your friends and claim the title of “Mayor” of a location. So what? In much the same way that new Twitter users are stumped by the question “What are you doing?”, new Foursquare users find the act of checking in at a location somewhat pointless. As a friend of mine says, other than enabling stalkers what exactly are you getting out of it?

It’s true that the current actual value of Foursquare to the average user is minimal, if you stay mostly in your home town, you might find you are checking in at the same location as friends, possibly you might get a recommendation for an alternative to the location you are at, but that’s it. If you travel then you are likely to get more from it in terms of recommendations for places to visit, things to do and the potential of meeting other users – the core of Social Media.

However, just as Twitter as a service has spawned numerous add-on services and applications (see OneForty for the definitive list), so Foursquare is doing the same thing by opening up their API.  The heat map of my checkins below was created by WhereDoYouGo.

Ok so it’s a pretty picture but, again, so what? Imagine being able to layer your friends check-ins over the top and see it all graphically. You would, at a glance, literally be able to see the “hotspots” of your location. Much more useful, now add to that augmented reality applications like Layar – put the two together and you have a real-time city guide written by you and people you know.

Imagine being out for an evening, hold your cell phone camera up to a bar front and instantly see layered over the image reviews by people you know, see who you know who is in the bar without going in and what the special offers are for users of the application. Sounds like science fiction but all of the tech to achieve this already exists and is rapidly converging on a phone near you very soon.

Ready to sign up? Go on try it, and send me a friend request at the same time.