foursquare junkie.

You may or may not have heard about the “next Twitter phenomenon”, up and coming social media application, foursquare. If not, let me clue you in.

foursquare is essentially a means of geotagging yourself via Twitter as you run errands, dine out, or check out new venues in town. You leave tips for other users such as, “Reverse happy hour starts @ 9 & tapas are $2,” and the more you check in to any given place, you earn badges and mayorship (meaning, you’ve been there more than anyone else). Aside from the fact that it easily enables people to essentially stalk you, it’s pretty fun. Plus, several businesses are getting on board and offering specials to the mayor or users with certain stats. You can’t go wrong with a free cup of joe just for being an obsessive tweeter.

The things I like about foursquare:

1. I am more inclined to try something new based off a tip someone left.
2. I patronize local business and help spread the word about their establishment.
3. I get a huge ego boost when I see the words, “Congrats, you just became the mayor of…” (yes, it is all about me)

Things I don’t like:

1. Currently, the listings are user added & maintained, and if people don’t stop and take the time to search for a venue, duplicates crop up. (Which you can report as a dup and foursquare will take care of) For example, there were six listings for Camelback Ranch when I went down for the Dodger game a few weeks ago.
2. All the information my tweeps see is a link to a Google map – they don’t get to see any of the tips or information about the venue.
3. That stalking thing I mentioned.

I challenged a friend-of-a-friend (whom I’ve never met) to a mayorship duel this week on the best mexican restaurant in town, in retaliation for him booting me as mayor someplace else. I am also on a mission to unlock the “Super Mayor” badge – being mayor of 10 places at once (I am at 9 right now).

In all, it’s dumb, sure. Just like Twitter is. But it helps to stimulate our local economy, which can’t be bad at all.