Now you can ping your friends to get together at a restaurant or bar. Or just shout at them.
They can find you through the global-positioning system (GPS) chips in your smart phone if you’ve logged on to the Foursquare social network and “checked in” at a local business location. On Foursquare, a ping is a brief “I’m here” message, while a shout is a text message.
“I’ve got about 150 friends and mutual acquaintances on the service,” said Shawn Horton, 24, of St. Paul, Minn., a dedicated user of social media. “You just let your GPS phone say ‘I’m here.’ ”
But New York-based Foursquare, a hot new social network that claims 1.5 million users nationwide who can locate each other whenever they want, is also a nascent cell phone advertising company — albeit one without a discernible business model so far.
With consumers “checking in” via Foursquare at businesses such as participating restaurants and bars, they become accessible to both friends and advertisers. Foursquare sends to their cell phones a list of nearby businesses, including other restaurants or bars that are offering specials on food or drinks. Each business has a page on Foursquare that includes a list of Foursquare users who have checked-in there and consumer reviews of the businesses. So far it’s free advertising for bars, restaurants and the like, although some suspect the rapidly growing Foursquare will charge them fees at some point.
But for now the Foursquare service looks democratic.
“Participants are able to share their whereabouts with friends, and it benefits the venues insofar as it’s a very cheap way to market,” Horton said.
In addition, Foursquare sets the privacy bar high. It lets consumers limit sharing their locations with only verified friends but gives them the option of sharing more broadly through connections to social networks Facebook or Twitter.
But…