FOUR SQUAREGamification in Customer Engagement

Prepared By

Manu Melwin Joy

Assistant ProfessorSCMS School of Technology and Management

Kerala, India.

Phone – 9744551114Mail – manu_melwinjoy@yahoo.com

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FOUR SQUARE

• In 2009, Foursquare

launched a location based

social network that allowed

you to “check-in” at various

venues, turning “life into a

game”.

FOUR SQUARE

• The service was initially

limited to certain metro

areas, but after it opened, it

reached 10 million users,

which enabled the company

to raise $ 50 M in 2011 at a

valuation of $ 600 M.

FOUR SQUARE

• One of the core drivers

behind the craze to check-in

using Foursquare and not

competing services was

Foursquare’s use of

gamification.

FOUR SQUARE• Foursquare gamified check-ins,

letting users get points for

certain activities (such as

checking into a new place), get

badges for checking in and even

get mayor status, if a user

checked into a certain venue on

more days than anyone else in

the past 60 days.

FOUR SQUARE

• Recently Foursquare separated

its check-in service into an app

called swarm and the new

Foursquare, which “learns

what you like and leads you to

the places you’ll love”.

FOUR SQUARE

• Now Foursquare wants to

move into the local search

space, targeting yelp and

google reviews for places such

as restaurants.

FOUR SQUARE

• And to do that it needs users

to create a lot of reviews, so it

can offer meaningful reviews

and compete in the restaurant

search space. As a result, the

company is introducing a new

kind of status – expert.

FOUR SQUARE• Expertise is a function of the user’s

performance within foursquare and

not outside of it (the opposite of the

Linkedin influencer, whose expertise

is external to the Linkedin service).

This should encourage users to

review more places and submit

more tips, making the Foursquare

service valuable.

FOUR SQUARE

• The story of Foursquare holds

a valuable truth: Gamification

mechanics are powerful and

can drive user behavior; but

the behavior has to contain

an intrinsic value without the

game mechanics.