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Have you ever checked in to a venue on Foursquare and also wanted to share which event you were there to attend? Your workaround was likely to attach a 'shout' note to your check-in about what movie you were there to see or which concert you were there to rock out to. Apparently, this is not an uncommon feature request by users, so Foursquare decided to do something about it.
Yesterday, the location-based social network announced it is starting to pull major events into its databases to enable users to check-in not just to venues, but also to specific events occurring at those venues. So a check-in to that movie theater in town becomes a check-in to that movie theater to see Harry Potter, or whatever movie is tickling your fancy on that day. And a check-in to that performing arts center becomes a check-in to see the Katy Perry concert, saving you the effort of typing it in manually.
Foursquare has said it will add hundreds of thousands of events to more than 50,000 venues over the next few months and is looking at ways to expand that even further.
This new Foursquare feature not only provides a better user experience, but it also makes check-ins even more social. Now users can see what their friends' taste in events is, and perhaps even get alerted to events they might want to attend themselves in the future.
After testing event-based check-ins at the past couple of SXSW events as well as other events around Austin, which generated a lot of traction, Foursquare decided to build out the capability on a much larger scale, partnering with ESPN for sports events, MovieTickets.com for movies, and Songkick for concerts. Currently, the feature is limited to Foursquare.com and the iPhone (no upgrade required), but Foursquare indicates it will be rolling it out to other platforms soon.
Takeaways for Event Marketers
While Foursquare has not yet added functionality for users to add their own events to venues, overwhelming comments to Foursquare's announcement prompted an update to Foursquare's blog post, indicating they're mindful of the request and will make announcements once they've figured out how to "do it right."
Future capability for users to add their own events to venues has some pretty awesome implications for event marketing. It would certainly be a feature marketers could take advantage of in the promotion of upcoming events they're planning and hosting. Marketers should keep their ears tuned in to future announcements from Foursquare about when this feature might become available.
What do you think of Foursquare's event check-in capabilities? How might marketers be able to take advantage of it for events they're hosting?
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