about  /   archives  /   contact  /   subscribe  /   twitter    
Share this entry
Make this entry better

What are we missing? Is there a key link we skipped, or a part of the story we got wrong?

Let us know — we’re counting on you to help Encyclo get better.

Put Encyclo on your site
Embed this Encyclo entry in your blog or webpage by copying this code into your HTML:

Key links:
Primary website:
foursquare.com
Primary Twitter:
@foursquare

Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

Foursquare is a location-based social network that awards users for “checking-in” to venues in a city on a mobile device.

Foursquare was created by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai in 2009. Crowley had previously created another geolocation-based social network, Dodgeball, which was acquired by Google in 2005. Google shut down Dodgeball in 2009 and replaced it with Google Latitude. Originally available only in 100 metro areas, Foursquare became available worldwide in January 2010. As of January 2014, Foursquare had more than 45 million users and 5 billion check-ins worldwide.

Foursquare allows users to connect with friends and broadcast their location across other networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The service has game-like features to entice users to engage with the Foursquare regularly, including points, badges, and “mayorships” for the most check-ins at a location.

Foursquare users can leave “tips” and bookmark venues, allowing them to use the service similar to a city guide like Yelp. Businesses have responded by creating deals specifically for Foursquare users, and the company lets businesses access information about customers who check-in.

In 2014, Foursquare split its service in two, creating a new app, Swarm, focused on check-ins and retooling the Foursquare app to center on exploration.

Foursquare and the media

News organizations have attempted a number of experiments to use Foursquare as a means of reaching new audiences. In 2010, The Wall Street Journal “checked in” to Times Square with news alerts when the areas was evacuated over fears of a suspicious package in a car.

Washington, D.C.-based TBD has said it used Foursquare to try to identify people near the scene of a shooting at the headquarters of the Discovery Channel. The National Post in Toronto partnered with Foursquare to offer recommendations and tips from the Post for the Toronto International Film Festival.

Peers, allies, & competitors:
Recent Nieman Lab coverage:
Oct. 29, 2018 / Christine Schmidt
Hunting for reader revenue, Scroll sets up shop for 2019 with more publishers and $10 million raised — With new publishing partners and $7 million more in funding, the TSA-Pre✓-for-Internet-news-consumption startup Scroll — led by former executives of Chartbeat, Spotify, and Foursquare — plans to unfurl in 2019̵...
Dec. 14, 2011 / Justin Ellis
A web-first politics site for NBC News: Vivian Schiller on the launch of NBCPolitics.com — NBC News keeps its political reporting in lots of different places. There’s Chuck Todd on Twitter, in the evening with Brian Williams and the Nightly News Crew, online at MSNBC’s First Read, or your Sunday mo...
April 14, 2011 / Tim Currie
What works for news orgs on Foursquare? Opinion, reviews, evergreens, but maybe not the news — At the International Symposium on Online Journalism earlier this month, one of the most interesting papers presented was from Tim Currie, an assistant journalism professor at the University of King's College in Halifax, ...
Feb. 14, 2011 / Martin Langeveld
Tackable aims to become the social network for user-generated news — Facebook and Twitter may be a great way to organize revolutions, but as we saw during the last few weeks of checking #Egypt and #Jan25 hashtags, following them on Twitter can mean a frustrating hunt through lots of chaff...
Jan. 24, 2011 / Justin Ellis
SeedSpeak: A geolocation app for better civic engagement — We're all too familiar with terms like "community" and "engagement" when talking about online news. But what if we take it back to the root? Not Twitter followers, blog comments, or Quora questions, but instead a group o...

Recently around the web, from Mediagazer:

Primary author: Justin Ellis. Main text last updated: July 31, 2014.
Make this entry better
How could this entry improve? What's missing, unclear, or wrong?
Name (optional)
Email (optional)
Voice Media Group logo

Voice Media Group is a Denver-based private company that owns 11 alternative weekly newspapers throughout the United States. Its flagship paper is the New York-based Village Voice, America’s oldest and largest alt-weekly. The company also owns many of the country’s other most prominent weeklies, including LA Weekly, Denver’s Westword, and the Phoenix New Times. Until…

Put Encyclo on your site
Embed this Encyclo entry in your blog or webpage by copying this code into your HTML:

Encyclo is made possible by a grant from the Knight Foundation.
The Nieman Journalism Lab is a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age.
Some rights reserved. Copyright information »