Foursquare's Brilliant Community Stewardship Campaign

Written by Dana Oshiro / November 12, 2009 3:19 PM / 4 Comments

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Often compared to Twitter for its meteoric rise to media darling status, location-based check-in game Foursquare is incredibly smart about its member stewardship and business strategy. On the heels of its September launch of Foursquare for Business and its recent partnership with the Bay Area Rapid Transit service, the group maintains its moniker as "little company that could". Foursquare has found a way to give to charity, increase members, test an advertising program and avoid footing the bill.

Between December 7-13, the location-based company is offering one sponsor a chance to re-skin the iPhone leaderboard site in exchange for a $0.03 pledge on every point earned on the Foursquare leaderboard. Through the Techies Give Back group, pledges will help CampInteractive in its mission to help empower inner-city youth. Last week New York Foursquare users racked up 150,000 points, so a sponsor would be likely to spend about $4500 to help a great cause, gain exposure to a huge cutting edge audience and be amongst the first to test a Foursquare re-skinning sponsorship service.

It'll be interesting to see who budgets for this very reasonable deal in their holiday ad buy. Whoever does will have the unfettered attention of thousands of high income, gadget-loving check-in addicted consumers. Meanwhile, Foursquare has found a way to put together a stellar community stewardship campaign while also helping a group who needs it. To inquire about the campaign email info@techiesgiveback.org.

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Comments

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Oh my god, novel idea! Sponsorship on one of the pages in the mobile app! Congrats on such an innovative idea!

Why does the media latch onto certain companies and praise them for simple ideas?

Posted by: John | November 12, 2009 6:16 PM

Hey John, Watch who you're calling "The media". I think the fact that someone else foots the bill for this charity event / member stewardship campaign is the smart part.

Posted by: Dana Oshiro | November 12, 2009 6:24 PM

Sorry not novel at all. We and other companies including non-profits live on it.

Posted by: Skyy | November 13, 2009 2:20 AM

Very cool idea. It will be interesting to see if Foursquare promotes this to its users in some broad way to encourage even more check-in activity during the campaign. Kind of like how NPR encourages more calls when they have a matching donor promotion running. I know I'd check in a lot more if I new I was helping fund an effective and needed program.

Posted by: Baratunde | November 15, 2009 1:39 PM