I was a Foursquare user for a long time and checked in over 3,000 times. I loved Foursquare – it allowed you to discover new places, get special discounts, and most importantly, display your expertise via badges. You earned badges for checking in to a certain type of place multiple times, you could “level up” your badges by checking in at new places of the same type. Each badge had 10 levels of expertise you could earn, and each new level was earned after five additional check ins. I was level 10 on several badges which means that I checked in to over 50 unique places of that type. In addition to the expertise badges, you could earn mayorships that would sometimes give awesome discounts if a vendor chose to give them. I really loved Foursquare – and then they changed it.
Foursquare now gives you some “stickers” instead of badges, and there are no additional levels of expertise once you earn a sticker. Also, you can no longer earn an overall mayorship, you are only the mayor of a place among your friends on Foursquare. I never liked having my friends list on Foursquare too large because I didn’t want the world to know where I was. Since I didn’t have many friends, mayorships in the new platform would be irrelevant. Also, since anyone can be mayor, there’s no incentive for a company to offer mayor discounts. Because of the change to their model I chose to abandon ship. My last check-in was at Disney World in the last couple hours of functionality. Great place to have my final check-in and subsequently delete the app.
