Mark Ghuneim

As the Foursquare team continues to rock location-based services world and “life is game” service grows as a important player in the LBS (Location Based Service) in the space I wanted to frame up some functionality I would like to see.  

Below are a couple of Foursquare feature sets I would welcome.   There is a more important sub-text to this which is location-based curation.
  
If location-based services help connect and contextualize the real world with the networked world how can services increase the number of valued connections and aggregate values for us?
   
Five Foursquare Features I would look forward to.

1: Passive vs Active:
On or off the grid presence, friction free check-ins.  When you want to be visible you are allows for less time ‘checking in’ and allots more time for annotation of more important information (there are both location accuracy and battery life issues with this)
   
2: Communication layer:
Basic peer to peer messaging and location based groups.  This allows for instant flash mobs around location.  Important new ways to collaborate on the fly.  (this level of ‘eyes on the ground’ understanding has infosec, and other intelligence values)
   
3: Games with in the game.
User generated games and logic.  Beyond badge creation this type of feature set will likely come from outside third party companies
   
4: Annotation features to structure context around place.
Multiple layers of information and place annotation.  I would like to be able to view and add to past conversations, noted history around a location.  This is the spot my wife and I met in 1979,  The Who performed Tommy in it’s entirety here in 1984.   Factual layers;  This place is this big, with these emergency exits etc.
   
5: Path history, path predictability.  
This may be be simplest to execute a path history (editable) and path predictability information and maps.  Please show me the three places and times I will be tomorrow.

edited on 11/30 correcting typos -ugg no more late night blogging

Social media activity and conversation  impact the purchasing funnel.  I like mapping social media behavior to things like transactional data (ie sales)  to understand your key performance indicators around marketing and advertising in the social media space.

An additional stop between conversation and purchase is location.  As we look for the combined online / offline performance metrics  it might be fun to start looking at number of tweets per day around a product vs the number of check-ins at a retail locations.   We are starting to mash up that data now some neat insights emerging – more on that as week look at this type of data over time.

Trendrr – The Shake Shack (Number of Checkins on foursquare)

I really like what the NYT did around Game 4 of the World Series. They made a list on Twitter comprised of sports writers and columnists – personalities that are experts in their field.  Users could easily follow the game with commentary through the collective intelligence of a smart list.

Publishing ephemeral lists of specific knowledgeable people around events is a major step forward in collective networked intelligence.  It is a tool that generates signal and filters out the noise of what general search results yield.

Smart Lists are the beginning of another small, yet important behavioral trait born through social media.

There are a myriad of behaviors that are emerging out of social and location based networks, some viral ones that fall under the amusing ourselves to death banner, but there are also behavioral shifts taking place that have larger impact.

Twitter Lists are one of them.

Lists create new aggregate value for social and real-time conversations by bringing clarity and focus around terms and events – more signal, less noise

When evaluating or creating a list, it is highly important to consider the following attributes of the people contributing to that list:

• Reputation
• Influence
• Intelligence

These will determine the ultimate value that list generates.

The human assembly of a good ’smart list’ is a programming currency that matters (read: valuable skill set).  The added textual extensions or utility that these smart lists bring to events, stories, ideas, will serve to be a source of new and important aggregate value over time.