Foursquare Mayor – An extremley meaningfull title, but not for the mayor!

I have been writing posts on how to unlock foursquare badges for the past week or so. My intention for collecting these badges was actually part of trying to figure out what on earth is the point of Foursquare in the first place. One of my goals was to unlock the Super Mayor badge, which I have done, and for which I will write a “how to” post.

To be a mayor on Foursquare means that you have gone and checked in at a location at least 2 times, and that you have the most check ins at that location. If someone else checks in to the same location, you will be in a mayor-ship fight until one of you two gives up. I have had the honor or holding many mayor-ships, and even stole one this week (Venue 358342 a.k.a Barrhaven Vietnamese Restaurant). I have gotton a few chuckles from people when I became mayor of some locations, proud to say, I hold down two gas stations, a McDonalds, a meat shop, and a police station.

I had a very annoying professor in college who always said the following statement after every comment made in class , it was annoying at the time, but she had a good point. Her statement was “so what and who cares?”, which is exactly the point of this post, I am the mayor of a meat shop, “so what, and who cares?”

Well I certainly don’t care, I get no benefit out being mayor of a McDonalds. My friends who see my foursquare tweets don’t care if I am mayor a police station, they may chuckle, but should they care?

The people who should care however and care a LOT are the owners of places where people check-in. My friends know, that I complain about many meals I buy from restaurants, and so if I am a mayor of a restaurants, that means I like it enough to go back, and if I am telling my friends that I am back, that means free word of mouth advertising, and that is money. Here is the problem, I asked the manager of the Barrhaven Vietnamese Restaurant if I will get a discount because I am the mayor of their store on Foursquare. I could have been from a different planet because she had no clue what I was talking about. Hence the Foursquare dilemma

The people who should absolutely care about Foursquare, often have no clue of its existence, the rest of us are just passers by.