A Glimpse at the Future of Foursquare

This article from Mashable.com discusses how the location-based social media tool, Foursquare, plans to dominate "what happens after the check-in." While CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley acknowledges that the check-in aspect of Foursquare is vital, he believes the real value of this service begins after the access point. These new additions to Foursquare can be expected by the end of this year or early next year.

One feature Foursquare is working on implementing is customized recommendations. These recommendations would be based on a user's check-in history. Crowley wants to be able to offer special deals consumers would be interested in as well as have Foursquare tailored enough to recommend things users should do next. For example, if a user frequents a certain bar, the application would recommend a number of others he or she might be interested in. Or if you go to a city you've never been to, Foursquare would recommend places and activities based on your previous check-ins in your home city.

I think these ideas are essential to the survival of social media tools like Foursquare. The web and mobile continue to become more personalized every day and if services do not adapt, they will not be able to stay at the forefront of the competition. Personalization is becoming the norm for users - it is a part of social media consumers have come to expect.

Another inventive idea Foursquare has developed is the instant check-in. This would enable users to walk in to a familiar place, have their phone recognize that location and ask if they would like to check in. Crowley says the only barriers to this idea becoming a reality are the fact that GPS technology is not quite sophisticated enough yet and in order for the phone to recognize your location, users would have to keep that feature on and it would run down the phone battery.

I think this idea is the perfect balance between ease of usability as well as concern for user privacy. The only action required on the part of the user is clicking yes or no when the device asks if you would like to be checked-in. But also, the feature is discrete in that it would not automatically check the user in which I think people will appreciate.