Foursquare keeps me innovative

Foursquare and innovation went together for me because I used the service as a way to play with new possibilities. I was not particularly interested in badges or discounts. I wanted to understand where the connection between the internet and the physical world could lead.

I recorded the video while on holiday in Delray Beach, Florida, in February 2013. My family and I had lived there for just under four years. We were back, staying at a lovely place, Sunday House, with a tropical garden, a pool with fish and children running around playing.

A badge on Twitter prompted the question

I still used Foursquare, although not as much as before. The other day, I had checked in somewhere and received a badge with something like The Great Outdoors and a new level.

Apparently, my account was set up to post it on Twitter. Several people had seen the message and asked why the hell I spent time on it. They had never really understood the point of Foursquare.

It was a fair question. For me, there was both an explanation of the service itself and a more important explanation of why I bothered trying it.

A check-in said where I was

I described Foursquare as a service based on your location. When I arrived at a hotel, the phone’s GPS could help me find the hotel on a list. I selected the place and checked in. Boom, now the service knew I was there.

The more places you visited, and the more you used the service and uploaded photos, the more little badges you could earn. That was what I called gamification: using game-like rewards to make an activity more fun and make people want to return.

I made a loose comparison with karma points on Amino, which we also used for other things. I thought gamification was a big and interesting trend. I wondered aloud whether I had already made a video about it or ought to.

Discounts and marketing close to the customer

As I described it, consumers could also discover offers nearby. If I checked in at a restaurant, for example, there might be a restaurant across the street offering a free glass of red wine.

I could also see where my friends were, if they wanted to use that part of the service. So there was both a social element and something practical about knowing what was happening around you.

A hotel could get publicity when guests shared their check-ins on Twitter. I also imagined messages such as: stay an extra night and get a discount, or come down for mojito offers tonight.

I described the business idea as local businesses paying to reach people in the area. A hotel or restaurant might also approach someone who had checked in next door. I was talking about what I saw as the possibilities at the time, with several hypothetical examples.

For me as a holidaymaker, a 20 per cent discount at a nearby restaurant or a free beach chair could be interesting. It was the connection between a physical place, an immediate need and an online message that made the idea exciting.

I did not know whether Foursquare would win

My impression was that Foursquare had not caught on in Denmark as it had in the US. I thought Facebook’s check-in feature had played a part: as Foursquare began growing in Denmark, Facebook introduced something similar.

I did not know whether use of Foursquare was still growing. I felt I heard less about the service and wondered whether it was running out of steam. So I was not sure that particular company would win.

That did not change my interest in the idea behind it. A particular service perhaps not winning did not mean the whole opportunity was uninteresting.

Foursquare and innovation: I wanted to see which way the wind was blowing

I did not primarily use Foursquare to get discounts. And a badge raised to the eighth power did not mean much to me either. I used it because I was a playful person.

I bought gadgets, downloaded apps and tried new things. I wanted to stay open to the world. I worked with Amino and entrepreneurs, and it was interesting to understand how far technology had come and where it could take us.

If you knew where someone was and what time it was, you could start thinking about their needs. At 11.30, they might be ready for lunch. In the morning, it could be brunch, and in the evening perhaps a film.

In an area with expensive shops, perhaps there could be interest in a fashion show. I was just brainstorming and said myself that the ideas might be silly. I encouraged people to keep thinking.

I also imagined that visits to different shops over time could tell you something about a person’s interests and the products or services they used. In my view, that could create opportunities for more relevant marketing both at the time and later. Those were the business possibilities I was thinking aloud about in the recording.

I had heard about the idea since the WAP days

I thought I had been hearing about location-based services for around 15 years, right back to WAP and the early ideas about mobile internet.

Back then, some imagined customers receiving text messages with offers as they walked down the high street. I had not believed it would add up. In my view, there were too few relevant mobile users, and among those, even fewer wanted that sort of message.

With such a small target audience, you would have to charge a lot per impression to make the business viable. I did not think the marketing would be worth the money.

In 2013, I thought the conditions were different. Smartphones had become much more widespread, and many people had mobile broadband at a fixed price or enough data. Messages could arrive through apps. At the same time, I thought the crisis was making more people interested in discounts.

I mentioned Groupon and other discount services as examples of something gaining momentum. If you combined offers with customers’ physical locations, I saw interesting potential. I thought the technology was there, but was not yet really being used in the way I could imagine.

Could I use the thinking for something on Amino?

I had plenty to do and was not interested in entering Foursquare’s business myself. Nor did I necessarily think they were using the opportunities quite right. But what I saw sparked other thoughts.

Could you make a version for businesspeople? Perhaps they could review restaurants where you could have a good meeting and lunch. Or meeting rooms and other places suited to business.

Perhaps you could check in at a conference and say whether it was good. Those were possible ideas I got from trying something that, at first glance, had little to do with Amino.

I pushed myself to play

The truth was that I did not really want to use Foursquare. I pushed myself to do it anyway and understand how the service worked. It was part of how I kept myself innovative.

If I was going to dream up new services for Amino and new businesses in the future, I also had to experience something new. Looking at the things I already knew was not enough. Read also Iværksætter til jeg dør for more of my experiences of developing ideas and businesses.

So my advice was to play. Try gadgets and apps. Ask people who are ahead of the game what they use and what they are doing. Install something and try it, even if your first reaction is that it is stupid.

For me, the point was that you could force yourself to think a little differently and stay open. Then that small experience could suddenly lead to an idea that turned your world upside down.