Review: three weeks after using foursquare

This past Thursday marked my third week after signing up and starting to play the mobile social network-cum-game foursquare. I’ve written about their launch and my thoughts about finding value in the social network-cum-game.

I’m enjoying foursquare as I dig into the mobile platform. I was also lucky enough to be using the mobile platform so much that I got upgraded from a normal user to Superuser – Level 1. There are three superuser levels outside of the normal users on foursquare:

Level 1:  You can edit venue info (address, cross streets, Twitter names), mark places as closed, and let foursquare know about duplicate venues.

Level 2: All the option of level 1 plus you can actually merger duplicate venues.

Level 3: All the option of level 1 & 2 plus you can start to create badges on the platform.

I can’t wait to be upgraded to the next superuser level. It’s interesting as foursquare is only four employees and they are harnessing the community to help clean up the database of venues vs hiring tons of staff to do it for them. TechCrunch had a story a few weeks ago about how after upgrading some users to superuser level 2 they went from 2,000 duplicate venues to 200 in less then 2 hours. That’s amazing amount of work in only a few hours.

It’s fun using the mobile platforms and seeing where my friends are in parts of the city and even places close by. Plus when it gives me a recommendation of a friend who likes a place close by to where I’m checking into… it’s awesome. However, I do have some recommendations for foursquare:

• Allow superusers to edit venues & tags on your mobile website
• Allow users to add or edit tags for venues on the mobile website
• Improve the connection for users using your mobile website. I find sometimes my BlackBerry won’t connect to the website.
• If someone is entering a franchise or a chain…. it would be cool if users could check a radio button and the system would pull the intersection and add it to the venue name. To many people are entering franchises or chains with just the name and not taking into account that other locations will need to be added later. This is an issue as you can’t have a place with the exact same name.

I’m loving foursquare and even with the small issues above… I can’t wait to start using it as I travel across the country and around the globe.

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