Foursquare has over a million registered users globally now.
Of these users, what sort of demographic has the highest usage? if you are a business using Foursquare to target customers and see their feedback – what sort of people are you reaching out to?
In order the judge the popularity of Foursquare amongst users in Sydney, Australia i ran a ‘tests’ at several locations in Sydney.
1. Mecca Espresso – midweek 11:30 am
Mecca Espresso is a trendy cafe in King st, Sydney CBD. Attracting mainly white collar business professionals i was surprised to see 9 people had checked-in over a 2 hour period.
Say 100 people went into the coffee store over the last 2 hours, this would be 9% of users checking into Foursquare.
2. Sydney Cricket Ground/ Sydney Football Stadium – Sunday Afternoon watching a NRL game.
Obviously attracting a different user demographic to the Mecca Espresso CBD business crowd, the number of people who checked-in to Foursquare was very small, out of 30,000+ people watching the football game.
This equated to about 0.04% of people who attended the game checked-in to Foursquare.
3. Social Media Club Sydney #SMCSYD – 8pm Oxford Art Factory, Oxford st, Darlinghurst.
There were probably 200 attendees at the Sydney Social Media club last night – mainly a group of media and technology professionals interested in hearing about up and coming social media tips and strategies.
I would say almost 20% of the crowd checked-in to Foursquare over the night.
Its clear Foursquare is getting high usage from Media professionals, business workers – whilst it has not penetrated the general population yet.
Business owners using Foursquare – you know who to target!
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Businesses need to give customers an incentive to ‘check in’ or become ‘mayor’ of the location otherwise I don’t think Foursquare will have the staying power like Facebook or Twitter. Consumers will get sick and tired of checking in just for a badge or points but if incentives such as ‘become mayor and receive a free coffee’ was available then it would be a different story.
Foursquare uses are smart phone users. It would be a wise decision for a coffee shop in a business district to run a foursquare campaign vs a coffee shop in a lower class outer suburb due to the lack of smartphones such as the iphone.
I really do hope that retailers see the potential of Foursquare. Once they do and promote incentives of ‘checking in’ – then I think it will go mainstream.
I agree with Elliot … we need more people to join Foursquare, but businesses need to come on board too, otherwise when the application loses the novelty factor, what else is there to encourage use?
Tips may help with some users that like to try different restaurants, cafes ect and use it as a recommendations type app but more mainstream users definitely will get sick and tired of Foursquare unless there is incentives to use it.
Is there many businesses using it as a marketing tool over east? It is upto blogs like this to promote the potential!
I will leave the app sitting on my iphone for now and hope the adoption rate picks up soon!
Hi Michelle, Elliot
I have noticed a few (very few) businesses around Sydney CBD offering specials for mayors and even non-mayors who are regular repeat customers.
Foursquare has tipped a million users now – and we can only assume a majority of these are in the US. I think in the Australian market we have a pretty small user base but there are a few user demographics that have good usage (mostly media/business/ digital people using an iPhone or BlackBerry).
In terms of the businesses benefiting most from Foursquare – it seems food outlets/ retail / FMCG
In the US the Starbucks partnership has seemed successful so far, why not go global with it?
I have tried using Foursquare to promote sales on an advertising business and not one bite.
I agree Foursquare needs to offer incentives or the users will leave over time.
It takes time for these things to catch on. Last time I checked into foursquare it wasn’t available in Australia. A free coffee would go a long way to attracting the businss crowd, creating a buzz that would dramatically increase uptake amongst those with a discretionary income of both foursquare and the local business. What have they got to loose? And I would think there is a great deal to gain.