Should employees be mayors on foursquare?
by Chip
I love the idea of location based services like Google Latitude and Foursquare. I usually try to check-in at some of the most interesting places I go so that I can keep track of where I’ve been. I might also want to share it with a friend or look back on it for a blog post later.
Tonight when I checked in at my church on foursquare, I noticed that someone had stolen the mayorship from me and I was 9 days away from being mayor again. I usually check-in twice a week and when I was there last Sunday I was still the mayor. What happened?
I started to wonder how/why someone would check-in so often? What were they doing there? Did they work there? Maybe they were picking up their child from daycare every day?
I understand that foursquare is competitive in nature in that some people try to game the system by checking in everywhere, sometimes in fictitious locations, but what happens when an employee checks in every day before work making almost impossible for someone to steal their mayorship?
Its interesting when consider that a business might be trying to offer specials for local patrons that are loyal to their favorite haunt. How do you think businesses should deal with this?
I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this. What do you think? How would you deal with employees that have never ending mayorships at their workplace?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.
Great point, Chip.
As with most contest rules, employees should be ineligible for social promotions. I think employees should help promote their company’s social presence and activities; instead of turning people away.
In the case of 4sq, daily checkins by employees, even when posted by personal accounts, numb the public’s reaction to the brand on social channels. It would also warp campaign stats.
A compromise could be to encourage employees to only checkin for special events. Or use a similar service that the company is not active on.
Awesome point Will! Very well articulated.