Foursquare – Merging Geo with Social

Foursquare is an application that tracks your treks around the city and blasts your latest location out to friends. Like a social networking site, the application lets you connect with friends and see what they’ve been up to. However, what makes Foursquare different is its location-based concept, focusing more on where you’ve been than who you know, and doling out prizes to the users who check in at popular spots the most often.

To get started on Foursquare, you need to find some friends. The application makes it easy, by going through your Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter contacts and pulling out Foursquare users it thinks you might know. Once you’ve got some Foursquare friends, you can start clicking on profiles and seeing the most recent places your contacts have been. To “check in” at a location yourself, simply open up the mobile application and sort through the automatically generated list of nearby venues. Foursquare uses your device’s GPS to determine where you’re at, so there’s no need to type in any confusing addresses. Once you’ve spotted the name of the bar, restaurant, or venue where you’re located, just click once to virtually check in.

You can send your latest location to your Facebook or Twitter account, or keep it local (and more private) by simply alerting your Foursquare contacts. Once you’ve been to a particular venue more than any other user, you’ll win the prize of becoming “the mayor,” and have your profile show up to anyone else who checks in at that spot. Over time, you can also win “badges” for checking in at various spots and add “tips” or suggestions for what to do at the venues you frequent most. If you enjoy social networking, then Foursquare is a fast-growing application that you should definitely check out.