Becoming Mayor on Foursquare

Foursquare is becoming a fast growing social networking mobile phone phenomenon across America, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and probably anywhere else, geeks, mobile devices and Foursquare software can be found. Foursquare is for the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm, and can also be accessed by creating an account from Foursquare.com and texting 50500 from your cell phone.

Foursquare is a simple application you use to "check-in" on your mobile device when you are currently visiting a café, restaurant, museum, park, or anything within your city. The GPS unit in your mobile device relays your location back to Foursquare and you get rewarded a point for visiting the location, along with notifying all your Foursquare friends to where you are currently.

This is a great device for people looking to explore their city and get out more and also for commerce, as it allows businesses to keep track of how many times a customer is visiting their businesses. This has prompted a few businesses to go ahead and start rewarding customers who Foursquare from their location with frequent special discounts and promotions.

One of the fads within the Foursquare community is becoming a Foursquare Mayor of any one location. You can become Mayor by simply visiting a location more times than anyone from within the Foursquare community. For instance, if you Foursquare from a café three other Foursquarers visit and you "check-in" the most often in a month from that location you will become the Mayor of that location. Some businesses are even giving special Mayor discounts to Foursquare Mayors of their location, which is reason enough to "check-in" on Foursquare if you're gonna be there anyhow.

In some metropolises with a high geek and mobile phone rat population the competition to become Mayor can get heated, especially on the public transportation systems in San Francisco and New York. Numerous Foursquarers find themselves battling it out in a friendly competition for the Mayor status as they commute on the rail cars or subway of both cities. Even the public transportation companies in certain cities are encouraging the use of Foursquare as it bolsters the amount of riders on their mass transit, which is great for the environment and mass transit.

I will warn you to choose who you have on your Foursquare friends list carefully. In the hands of that creepy thirty year old, Foursquare is a stalker magnet, allowing them to find you anytime you "check-in". This is especially important for parents to keep track of, hopefully you'll be on your children's friends list which is a great way to keep track of them without being over-burdening and you can keep an eye on who their friends are online at the same time.