It's Hip to Be (Four) Square: Guest Post by Chris Chinchilla [09.06.2010]
You may not have heard of foursquare yet, but you undoubtedly will over the coming months. It received an official seal of approval at this years prime tech get together, South by South West, and many other businesses and people are jumping on board.
What is foursquare?
Many call it a social network, but it’s not really. Most users see it as more of a large scale social game. The premise is simple: as you visit locations, you check in. The more check-ins, the more points you get and if you check into a location more times than anyone else, you become it’s ‘mayor’. Checking in to locations requires a fairly modern fancy phone (apps are available for most smart phones), test messaging or lugging a laptop around with you, so most current users are fairly tech savvy. Foursquare’s increase in popularity means more switched on and open minded businesses are learning how to use it to their advantage, offering discounts and special offers to users who check in the most, or incentives to ‘swarm’ events (when 50 or more users check in at one time; there have only been a handful of these in Australia).
How can it possibly be of any use to publishers?
The most relevant features to publishers are ‘Tips’ and ‘To Do’ that allow users to add nuggets of advice about locations in your vicinity. For a publisher like Aduki, the uses are obvious: we could take brief summarised versions (200 characters) of reviews from, say, the Veg Food guide and add them to each relevant venue, giving users a taste of what we offer and encouraging them to check out our site and titles. Likewise, you could add tips to smaller bookshops that stock your titles, promoting them and yourself. But what about books that aren’t so easily chopped up, or aren’t about promoting specific places or products. How could a service like foursquare be of any use to you, indeed of any use to its users?
By being a little more inventive and having a bit of fun!
If your book is based in the ‘real world’, find locations that are mentioned in it (Whilst foursquare discourages checking into venues you’re not at, adding tips is fine) and add snippets from the characters or author, i.e. at Kings Cross station in London, you could add something like “Visit platform 93/4 to catch the Hogwarts Express! (Harry Potter)”, or if you have a piece of prose written at or inspired by a particular location, you could add, “Piece title was inspired by here, I hope you are too! (Book Title)”. As with any kind of free, user based service, you have to be wary of pushing products down people’s throats or being too pushy in trying to sell things. Sometimes clever and subtle use is enough to encourage users to look further into what you said and will earn you all the more respect in the long run.
Chris Chinchilla has been a ground breaking eZine writer, indie rockstar, solo troubadour, professional geek, activist, street press writer and much more… He believes in not preaching to the converted and breaking open ideas to make them appealing and accesible to everyone. Now as the new publisher at aduki Independent press he intends to do much the same. Watch this space…
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Comments
Wheeler Centre — 18 June at 10:34AM
We’re keen to see how foursquare develops. We’re looking at how we can offer more to people who check in at our venue, but at the moment it’s a small audience. But it’s a new social network and these things take time to develop. Looking forward to seeing what publishers will do with it.