FourSquare.Com- Twitter in Geographic Perspective !

Foursquare .Com is the next big thing to hit the technological world of social networks.Pundits including Mashable are on to the smart phone application .Whereas, Twitter without doubt has grown to be a powerful social media and marketing forum, however the thing about Twitter is that often the tweets and friends one receives are often not geocentric.

As was the case with Myspace and Facebook ,some two genius minds have come up with a concept/social media networking forum(the service was created by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai) that enables one to post Tweets that are geocentric about places and events and a plus to the application is that the Tweets or review about the event or place will permanently remain attached to the location. Poor service providers best beware, your customers may just be onto you!

The site includes a Google maps integration widget to enable the user point out where they are at , what is going on, a review of the place... etc and this will remain embeddable about the specific location. Now that's a powerful marketing tool.

The Foursquare mobile phone application that allows you to “check-in” to a particular foursquare location is compatible with the following smart phone's Blackberries, iPhones, Androids and Palm Pres.The application using GPS or closet cell phone tower can determine about where you are. You then choose from a list of nearby locations or enter in a new location.Once checked in, a user can write a review of wherever they are.The review stays permanently connected to that particular location in the foursquare world.The application has led to the development of the term "Geo-social Networking" and boasts of over half a million users Worldwide.

Thus if you visit a hotel and you like the service you can notify your Foursquare friends, if you come across a major sale taking place and you want to notify your friends and leave directions,Foursquare will do that for you. As you visit more places you start to earn points or badges for the places you check-in. This adds an interesting gaming element to the network, which has proven very popular on social sites like Facebook. Even better than collecting badges is the chance to become the “mayor” of a location. You are named “mayor” of a location if you are the person who has checked-in the most and a lot of locations are starting to offer special deals to the “mayor” so they keep promoting them.

Will Foursquare prove popular in Africa ? Of course but unfortunately most people in the continent dont find Twitter to be so relevant. Foursquare is about to change that because of its potential and the reward effect.For example in Nairobi one can imagine the perks a famous restaurant such as the Carnivore Restaurant would love to give for its most frequent Foursquare visitor i.e "Mayor".In effect they will be receiving free social media advertising by genuine customers.For now as i learn the application i extent the invitation to my twitter buddies in Kenya please join me up at FOURSQUARE  and lets create our virtual cities !