Publishers take Notice of Foursquare’s Small Business Tools!
So, you may have heard about Foursquare’s beta launch of small business dashboards that allow proprietors to get information on the Foursquare users that ‘checkin’, while at their storefronts. On all accounts, this is interesting ‘stuff’, as it outlines a Web based start-up, which is really a social media game of sorts, look to take steps towards what we feel is a monetization strategy, and quickly. Foursquare has only been up and running for a little over a year and has an estimated 200,000 users today, all amassed with 1.35 million in funding. But, all this innovation by Foursqure leads us to ask the million dollar traditional media question: What does this all mean for publishers of directory products and or publishers of newspapers looking to take their business content, down the directory path? Well… it means that publishers should pause, take notice of what this pure-play start-up is doing to revolutionize small business marketing and then reassess their go to market directory strategies.
Many publishers have taken to creating fee based directory tools that provide little or no tracking information for businesses. What a company like Foursquare shows or tells a small business advertiser, especially that restaurateur, is that there are free consumer insight tools that can both give them additional information about their users, and aid them in building targeted marketing plans and strategies. In an article covered on Mashable, Tristan Walker, a Foursquare representative, shared that they were looking at eventually correlating checkins with weather patterns, along with showing in-store purchases and how that information correlates. I suspect that if they can include ad hoc elements such as these, Foursquare will quickly transition itself from a small business application, to a tool used by all businesses, regardless of size, and this, for sure, will have an impact on traditional directory advertising dollars, more so than any Web pure-play site in the past.
Some of the things the Foursquare small business dashboard is set up to provide businesses with are:
- User profile information, i.e. sex
- Social media activity – where are they sharing their Foursquare checkin’s
- Historical tracking
- Check-in times and trends
The above tells me that directory services, couponing and general business advertising aren’t slam-dunk revenue generators for newspaper and directory publishers, as once thought. Having pure play competitors, such as Foursquare in the playing field, means that publishers will have to think long and hard about what product sets at the launch of a Web based directory product will provide them with that competitive edge and make them not a ‘me too’ product.
Sample Foursquare Small Business Dashboard
Foursquare already provides businesses with the opportunity to offer deals and or specials to users and is stated to now be netting a checkin per second, globally!
