Foursquare tells you when you’ll be mayor

Posted on Aug 31, 2010 in Mobile

If you use Foursquare, you probably know how mayorships work (the person that checks-in the most days than anyone else at a venue is crowned the mayor). However, it was always a mystery of how many check-ins were needed to dethrone the mayor. A few months ago, I blogged about an application, WhenWillIBeMayor.com, that told you how many more check-ins you needed to become mayor.

Foursquare recently launched a new feature that now tells you how many days you’re away from becoming the Mayor when you check-in to a venue. I noticed this new feature the other day when I checked-in to Schlotzsky’s Deli. I got the notice that I was only 3 days away from becoming the Mayor.

Several venues have special offers and rewards for mayors, so this new feature will be helpful for those users who are battling for mayorships at popular venues.

Even with the launch of Facebook Places, Foursquare continues to grow (they recently surpassed the 3 million user mark this week). I started using Facebook Places to check-in the day it launched, but after using it for a few days, I’ve been really disappointed. In comparison, Foursquare is much more entertaining and user friendly than Facebook Places.

What do you think of this new feature within Foursquare? Are you using Foursquare instead of Facebook Places?

  • http://twitter.com/hinda_incentive Hinda Incentives

    This is a great engagement improvement for Foursquare. It makes the application more of a game and showing how close someone is to mayor clearly identifies a new goal for that Foursquare user. It’s a lack of engaging features like this one that has kept me from really using Facebook places. I think engagement will be the key to long term success in location based services

  • http://twitter.com/LaurenMullins Lauren Mullins

    Have you heard anything about a specific time frame that triggers this alert? I’ve noticed that I’m not getting the message on all of my check ins, so I’m wondering if the message isn’t shown if you’re really, really far from becoming the mayor. My guess is that it is shown if you will become mayor in 10 or fewer check ins.

  • http://welcometojmart.com/ Josh Martin

    Ahh, I haven’t noticed that, but that would make sense if it was time sensitive. I don’t think I would want to know that I’m 30 days from being the mayor. :)

  • http://welcometojmart.com/ Josh Martin

    I agree. I’ll give Facebook Places a pass since it is so new. Hopefully, it will improve with some new features going forward, but until then, I’m going to stick with using Foursquare.

  • http://twitter.com/LaurenMullins Lauren Mullins

    Agreed…but it still confirmed how impossible it will be for me to become mayor anywhere in my neighborhood. Everyone was talking about this feature, but I repeatedly never saw it.