Now as mayor of iStrategy, I’m obliged to be bullish on this presentation as Naveen Selvadurai, from Foursquare runs us through the game overlay and how gamification is motivating people to go out in the real word and do something!
The basic push to be Mayor of a location you frequent has initial draw, and badges, recognising your efforts extends the model. People coming to work just to keep their mayorship or frequenting the gym.
With 50000000 checkins, and at least one in every country around the world its a valuable datasource to analyse.
Heat maps, of checkins, are invaluable for picking new restaurant locations and even public transport routes. Future analysis of this draws insights into masses, and also personal details.
A record of lunch meetings, being a great prompt to realise, “hey, I haven’t connected with X client in a month”. Or even analyse who’s taking up your time and not converting to a sale?
Businesses
As foursquare became popular, chalkboard rewards were up in bars that realised their clients were embracing the platform. When in platform specials arrived, mayorships were the first to promote, but often not that interesting for the majority of clients, or roaming FourSquare users. First time, tenth time, bringing friends and Swarm discounts are some of the latest variants. Case Studies
Amex in Austin – took things further, aligning with frequent business, they labeled up certain places, and gave cash back rewards for checkins. History channel – added tips to historic / famous sites around the US CatchAChoo – took data from the API, hiding Jimmy Choo’s around London for customers to hunt down. The FourSquare API allows you access to all functionality and data – in the future CRM / CMS style management of locations will be available for brands. Self management getting around issue that they’re not physically in EMEA yet, as a company. Naveen believes FaceBook places, a large competitor lacks the gamification and a method for brands to link to their checkins. Privacy, although a concern, they believe the ability to hide checkins, checkin, post to twitter etc addresses users concerns. The last example being Pet food billboards that dispensed samples for a checkin.
For more case studies hit: http://www.Foursquare.com/businesses 
As foursquare became popular, chalkboard rewards were up in bars that realised their clients were embracing the platform. When in platform specials arrived, mayorships were the first to promote, but often not that interesting for the majority of clients, or roaming FourSquare users. First time, tenth time, bringing friends and Swarm discounts are some of the latest variants. Case Studies
Amex in Austin – took things further, aligning with frequent business, they labeled up certain places, and gave cash back rewards for checkins. History channel – added tips to historic / famous sites around the US CatchAChoo – took data from the API, hiding Jimmy Choo’s around London for customers to hunt down. The FourSquare API allows you access to all functionality and data – in the future CRM / CMS style management of locations will be available for brands. Self management getting around issue that they’re not physically in EMEA yet, as a company. Naveen believes FaceBook places, a large competitor lacks the gamification and a method for brands to link to their checkins. Privacy, although a concern, they believe the ability to hide checkins, checkin, post to twitter etc addresses users concerns. The last example being Pet food billboards that dispensed samples for a checkin.
For more case studies hit: http://www.Foursquare.com/businesses
Nick Allen - Marketing, Growth & Running 