Foursquare Houston & Bing Partner in a Sweepstakes

In honor of Foursquare Day, Bing is hosting a Foursquare’check-in’ sweepstakes from 9:00AM PT-11:59 PM PT on 4/16 and has identified Houston’s Official Foursquare Day event as a sweeps partner! For their national sweepstakes, Bing will be giving away six Nokia Lumia 900 Windows® Phones. Check out the exclusive details (and our shoutout!) on their official blog post here:

http://binged.it/ISjfD0

As an addition to the National sweepstakes, Bing will be selecting two of our lucky event attendees to receive $50 Live Nation® Concert Cash® code. (Rules: http://binged.it/HxehJT) We are eligible for entry into both the National and Houston based sweeps prizing and can enter by doing the following:

Contest Entry:

1) Follow Bing on Foursquare at http://www.foursquare.com/bing

2) Between 9:00AM-11:59AM PT on 4/16, check into ANY venue on Foursquare with the hashtags #Bing4sq and #4sqdayHOU and push out your check-in to your Twitter handle for it to be counted.

On April 17th, Bing will contact you via DM if you are a winner of either our event sweeps or their larger National sweeps.

Spread the word and best of luck!

Foursquare Day 2012 in Houston

Foursquare Day is almost here! We wanted to give you a sneak peak of what we had planned and tell you how you can get involved! 

The Basics:

What: Foursquare Day is a celebration of social media, bringing people together in the name of foursquare and exploring. Foursquare Day started 3 years ago, when a couple people in Tampa thought it would be neat to celebrate foursquare on 4/16 (4 squared).

When: Foursquare Day is April 16th = 4/4^2 (get it?). Yeah, it’s on a Monday this year. Deal with it. We’ll be starting at 6 to accommodate the school night. 4/16 is officially “Foursquare Day” in Houston, we got a proclamation from the mayor.

Where: for the third year running, Houston’s party will be held at Firkin and Phoenix Pub at 1915 Westheimer Rd.

Why: To create awareness of foursquare, meet new people and raise money for charity.

Who: Everyone is invited. Kids are okay too. Please RSVP on Meetup.com so we can get a good number of people to expect. 

The Party:

We will have events such as a real-life foursquare game, great swag giveaways, food trucks, and various bar promotions throughout the evening. Current giveaways include:

• foursquare t-shirts
• Gift Card from Mark’s American Cuisine
• Tickets to Houston Improv
• Swag Pack from McDonald’s
• Swag Pack from the Houston Texans 
• more to come!

Using snoball, each check-in will be a donation toward Ronald McDonald House Houston. If you are interested in contributing to our snoball and putting some money toward each check-in that evening, please contact us. 

Houston Businesses:

We’d love you to be involved! There are various levels of sponsorship and/or ways you can support foursquare in Houston:

1. Sponsor our party. We have many levels of sponsorship - from adding big items like a photobooth or foodtrucks (or other vendors), to contributing to our snoball, or donating swag. You will be promoted here, on twitter, and on 4sqday.com (now, that’s a sweet backlink to help your website). 

2. Run a one day special. On 4/16, businesses can run an extraordinary once-a-year type special to help celebrate foursquare, get exposure, and hopefully new customers. Plus, it’s traffic on a normally slow day of the week! If you haven’t used foursquare specials, this is a great way to try it on for size. Some businesses run $4.16 specials on items or give away something for free. So far, the only foursquare day special I know of is Smashburger (multiple locations), giving away a free Classic Smashburger to the first 10 check-ins after 6pm and free sides with entree purchase to check-ins thereafter. Perfect example of a 4sqday special. Find more information about how specials work at foursquare for business.

3. Come to our party! We’d love to meet you and can even help you set up a special. You’re invited. RSVP to 4sqDay.

Hope to see you there! 

February Meet-Up Announcement: El Gran Malo

This Thursday is our February meet-up! We’ll be drowning our disappointing Valentine’s check-ins with fancy margaritas and pork belly tacos. If you haven’t been to El Gran Malo, you must - check out all the pictures, tips, and lists it’s on!  

Join us 8-10pm at Ella and 23rd. Indulge in an all night happy hour: $3 off all margaritas and specialty cocktails and $1 off wines and beers. Let’s all get a different variety of infused tequila and compare Hot Tamale badge levels!

See you there! RSVP here.

Foursquare Houston January Meet-Up: Recap

Hey y’all, thanks for coming out to our first meet-up of 2012. John & I had a great time meeting some new faces and throwing around ideas for 4sqDay. BlackFinn was a great host who gave us an extended happy hour!

They’re now creating a long-term special, which is wonderful news. Also, we raised funds for Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston. See you in February! ~Nicole

January Meet-Up: BlackFinn American Grille

It’s that time again! Our January meetup will be at the newish BlackFinn American Grille on Monday, January 16th from 7-9PM. If you check in on foursquare, you will be offered $6 appetizer specials and $3 drink specials. Extended happy hour makes us happy. It’s also Martin Luther King day, so if you have the day off, you have no excuse to not spend the evening with us. We have a dream that we will have fellow foursquare enthusiasts show up at BlackFinn! 

We’ll also do another snoball, having our check-ins go again toward Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, since we lowballed our snoball last time.

Foursquare Lunch Recommendations, Done 3 Ways

Sometimes deciding where to go for lunch can be the most difficult decision one faces all day. Day after day, picking a place for lunch becomes such a hassle you pass the decision from coworker to coworker like a hot potato. Mmm… did someone say potato? No more schlepping it to that crappy lunch joint just because the guy in accounting has a crush on the waitress. Here are three different methods foursquare can pick your next meal. My foursquare lunch experiment: try a product that uses foursquare and go to the recommended venue no matter what and report back. Method #1: via email Where Next?! is a service that sends an email to you based upon your last check-in and suggests where to eat lunch.   Pros:

• You can customize the specific days and the time you’d like to receive the suggestions.
• The email contains five different venues.
• The recommendations are based on distance, popularity amongst friends, popularity on foursquare and venue check-in patterns (people who checked in at a place you frequent also frequent this place).
• Specials are highlighted, but I’m not sure if they are weighed in the recommendation.
• Likelihood of me using it is higher since it’s sent to my inbox and no further activity is required on my end.

Cons:

• When I first signed up for Where’s Next?! it took a while for the emails to actually start. It seems the kinks have been worked out now, because whenever I make changes to the settings, it’s responsive. Be patient, grasshopper.
• Just because a place is popular doesn’t mean it is good. And if a venue is too busy, you waste your precious hour waiting in line.
• It’ll recommend a place you’ve been to often (perhaps too often?). I guess Where Next?! is attempting to throw in at least one ‘safe’ recommendation in case the others are duds.
• Unclear if it takes into account my personal behavior - I don’t eat fast food, I prefer locally-owned businesses, I don’t like Thai food, etc.
• It often recommends a cupcake shop near my work, which really shouldn’t be my lunch - wait, is this a con?

My experience: Monday I used Where’s Next?! and my polite email came in right on time. The very first option was a sandwich shop I had never been to, but 3 of my foursquare friends had. People who checked into restaurants I’ve checked into had also checked into this sandwich shop, and it was popular on foursquare in general.  Although parking was abysmal, I found it a solid lunch choice and probably somewhere I would return.

Method #2: via third party app Having an Android phone, my options were a bit limited. I would like to try Dine-O-Mat, but since that wasn’t possible, I settled for foodSquare. (image from foursquare)

Pros:

• Lists eateries around  you via distance and check-ins.
• You can type in another location from which to search.
• You can shake your phone and get a random suggestion.

Cons:

• At the time, it was very slow and didn’t have my current location (it thought I was at home and not at work).
• It only rates places by distance and check-ins, no other qualities.
• It seems to be missing a lot of venues.

Foursquare.com got a makeover at the end of last year; now when you visit and allow foursquare to see your current location, you get suggestions based on the Explore engine.

Pros:

• Suggestions are time sensitive
• Based on the Explore engine - so there are places that are popular, places your friends have been to and places like those you frequent
• Suggestions seem unique; perhaps it’s because I visit the website so often, but I discover places I never knew existed (unlike Where’s Next?!)

Cons:

• None, really. Maybe one - you get that little pop-up when you go on the site to do anything.

My experience: Wednesday at noonish I visited the foursquare.com homepage and awaited the first of three suggestions. Foursquare recommended a Mexican restaurant I hadn’t been to that I really wanted to try. When I got there and checked in - I leveled up on the Hot Tamale badge AND unlocked the Eater 38 badge! Huzzah! The tacos were excellent, too.

Conclusion: I will continue to rely on the Explore engine for recommendations until something better comes along. I am still subscribed to my Where’s Next?! emails and even if I don’t open them every day, it’s always good to have some options when the inevitable question arises… “Where are we eating today?”   My question to you: Is there something you use for lunch recommendations?

Houston Tweet Drive

Our December monthly meet-up, we partnered with the Houston Tweet Drive. Toys were donated and check-ins benefited Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston. 

December Meet-up: Houston Tweet Drive 2011

With the upcoming December holidays, we wanted to do a little something different for our monthly meet-up. We’re joining Houston businesses and participating in Houston Tweet Drive 2011. This means our monthly meet-up is not going to be on our regularly scheduled 16th, but on the 15th.

Please join foursquare Houston at the Houston Tweet Drive 2011 on December 15, 2011 at 7PM at Caroline Collective. Bring a NEW toy or book to donate to Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston and be ready to party! There will be free awesome food & adult beverages, entertainment and live music. We will be attending with free foursquare schwag to give out. We’d love to see this party have support of the foursquare community and achieve swarm status (50+ check-ins). So come out, bring a toy, and let’s share some holiday cheer (and beer!).

RSVP

Follow @HouTweetDrive on twitter for the latest. Official hashtag will be #HouTweetDrive.