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Posts tagged Foursquare
Social media giant Facebook announces Single Sign-on, Places API, Deals, Mobile App Updates
Nov 4th
Popular social network Facebook announced a torrent of updates to its mobile products, namely four things: single sign-on, opening up its Places API, allowing businesses to attach deals to their Facebook Place page, and updates to its iPhone and Android apps.
Single Sign-on
Facebook are seeking to limit the amount of typing of long passwords and usernames that a user has to go through inside mobile apps by allowing integration with Facebook in a similar way to what you may see on many websites that you visit. People with the Facebook app installed on their smartphone will be able to log in to other mobile apps using their Facebook account, no giving up of private credentials necessary.
The Places API
Developers can now access the popular Places product to utilise in their own apps and websites. Places is a location based tools that allows Facebook users to ‘check in’ at locations and tag their friends, in a similar vein to location based social networks like Foursquare and Gowalla. The API allows developers to link their own products to this tool so that, for example, Foursquare check ins could be duplicated to Facebook Places. Developers will be able to read data from the tool, write More >
Foursquare Introduces Super Duper Swarm and Epic Swarm Badges
Oct 30th
Social Media Location Service FourSquare have rolled out ‘Super Duper Swarm’ and ‘Epic Swarm’ badges for people who convene in the same location in massive quantities.
Previously the biggest quantity badge was ‘Super Swarm’ for groups of 250 in the same place. In major cities like London this has occurred many times prompting the new and improved milestones.
“When we made the original Swarm badge we thought, ‘What are the odds of ever getting 50 Foursquare users together?’ And then we did the same with Super Swarm for SXSW. ‘Will anyone ever even unlock these?’” explains Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley. “And now they are unlocked on a regular basis — baseball games, concerts etc. So we needed bigger.”
When asked Swarm badge would exceed the 1000 mark, Foursquare had no answer…
“In our internal badge meetings, we’re thinking, ‘What’s after this?’ We have no idea,” says Crowley.
Although these badges are pure fun it does go to show the growth of the FourSquare buzz and the use of smartphones to interact with others via social media channels.
Do you use FourSquare and what name would you call the next milestone?
Gowalla Set Up Guide – Social Media Business Location App
Oct 28th
Stamps: Your Passport is a collection of stamps—both everyday and extraordinary—from the places you’ve been. Check in with Gowalla on your phone to stamp your Passport at each place you visit. It’s pretty much like stamping your passport in real life. Only without the jetlag and customs forms.
Connect With Friends: Gowalla makes it easy to keep up with your friends and family. Connect with your favorite people from Facebook and Twitter then enjoy the places they go and the photos they share—both online and from your phone. You can also invite friends to join in your journey from your address book. It’s super simple to set up.
Explore: Enjoy trips created by National Geographic, USA TODAY, CNNMoney and others that guide you to restaurants, through parks and gardens, or on historic walking tours. Of course, you can create and share your own trips with your friends as well.
Pins are added to your Passport to remind you More >
Foursquare Will Hit 4 Million Members This Week
Oct 19th
Foursquare are about to reach rthe 4 million member mark this week. The milestone comes roughly 50 days after the location-based mobile game signed its 3 millionth user. This means that Foursquare are adding up to 20,000 users per day.
What is Foursquare?
Foursquare is a mobile phone game that allows you to check in via GPS at locations such as shops, pubs, schools, your home, your street even tesco! You can search for locations near where you are and add new locations if it doesn’t yet exist. You are awarded badges for your explorations / travels and if you check in to a place morew than any other you become the Mayor of that place. You can leave fun tips so others checking in know a little more about the area.
Foursquare For Business
Big brands such as Starbucks, Dominos Pizza and Whetherspoon pubs to name but a few, are catching on and offer deals to the Mayor. For example you receive 20% off your food in any Whetherspoon pub if you check in and your the Mayor.
It is a great game and you can pick up some cool offers too.
Let us know if you use Foursquare and any cool offers out there?
More >Foursquare Is Down… Yes, Again
Oct 6th
According to a brief update on the company’s new status blog, the same issues that caused yesterday’s 11 hour outage are also responsible for today’s downtime.
The reason for both outages lies in Foursquare’s database management and architecture — that’s not to say Foursquare’s systems engineers are doing anything wrong, per se. But scaling is difficult, tricky business, and Foursquare is growing much more rapidly than is has since its inception.
The launch of Facebook Places about one month ago caused the app’s new registrations to skyrocket Shortly after that launch, Foursquare broke through the 3 million mark.
Lets hope they can iron these issues out without losing support from its users.
Foursquare Down for Nine Hours
Oct 5th
Users were saddened and angered today by a marathon outage at Foursquare.
The dominant player in the geolocation/social space has been out for nine hours so far; while staff say engineers are peering at “the light at the end of a tunnel,” we have no exact word on why the service is down or precisely when it will come back online.
Earlier today, a staffer posted on the company’s official Twitter account, “The servers are overloaded but we’re working on it! We will be back up ASAP.” This message was followed by the hashtag #caseofthemondays, a reference to a quotation from Office Space. A variant of this hashtag popped up in an update six hours later, indicating the engineering team had made little headway in repairing the server issues.
Then, about one hour ago, @Foursquare tweeted that the company’s entire engineering team had been called to work on the servers, vowing #NoSleepTillUptime.
Another Fousquare staffer wrote in an email, “Our engineers are working nonstop to get the site back up and running as quickly as possible. We’ll be putting up a detailed post mortem once we’ve resolved the issue tomorrow.”
UPDATE: Foursquare is back up again! A hearty congratulations to the engineers for restoring service shortly before midnight More >