One of the neat things about Foursquare is that it allows you to get tips from your friends about nearby venues. Tips are typically about things like the best time to go, what to order, what to avoid, etc.
In the world of user generated content, tips from friends are better from tips from strangers.
But what about editorial content from brands with local expertise?
Our friends over at ReadWriteWeb alert us to a new service called Location Layers from Foursquare that allows Foursquare users to subscribe to brands like the IFC and Huffington Post, and get tips from those brands about specific venues delivered via push notification.
Here is why I think this is important.
1) It’s another way for brands to work with Foursquare beyond the sponsored badge
2) It’s another way for end users to interact with brands via Foursquare
3) It represents a way for brands to deliver their editorial, local content to end users in the context of an end user’s location
4) It represents a way for Foursquare to get more high quality content into its ecosystem.
In terms of user experience, there doesn’t seem to be anything that’s actually new here, but Foursquare Location Layers hints at things to come.
Brand tips are still delivered upon check-in, via push notification – just like they are from your friends. Even before today, any brand could have set up their own Foursquare account, written a whole bunch of tips, and encouraged their user base to friend them.
Presumably, however, Foursquare is allowing the batch import of tips from brand partners, that are delivered to end users based on whether the end user is following that brand.
Brands win by getting a new distribution channel for their content. Foursquare wins by placing itself between the brand and the end user, and by acquiring high quality content for its users. End users win by getting more access to high quality local content.
Hey Hey!
Just wanted to shoot a note here. We, at foursquare, been allowing this for quite some time now (~Feb). i.e. bravo, zagat, history channel etc. Once you “follow” brands on foursquare, you can start receiving push notifications of their tips :) Not a new feature on the platform so to speak
Excited that IFC is helping us continue to test this out! Great campaign
Hey Tristan! Great feature.
There’s a whole different set of dynamics that comes into play when going this route. The easier it is for people to create layers, the bigger the payoff.
If I’m a Japanese tourist in San Francisco, layers will allow me to get wayfinder-type advice in my language, with my choice of editorial POV.
Once you get some critical mass going with layers, Foursquare could unlock some serious value by automagically generating the friends, likes, connections, feeds, etc. associated with said layers – and make it easy for people to subscribe/unsubscribe to the aggregate of those entities in said layers in a single step, and to be able to access those entities in their native app, whether that is Twitter or Facebook or fill-in-the-blank.
So, if you were to subscribe to Zagat’s NYC layer upon arrival at LGA, it would be as if you also added all of the restaurant front-line contacts for the top-rated restaurants, en masse, to your Facebook, Twitter, etc. simultaneously. And when you left for home, you could unsubscribe from the whole mess as well.