Mobile users, meet Foursquare: Foursquare is a new social networking site for mobile users that encourages in-person interaction, based on user-generated tips and to-dos on what’s hot in the neighborhood near you. If Facebook, Meetup and Yelp took a roll in the hay, Foursquare would be their love-child. This new socially charged networking platform has now partnered with Bravo TV, after the network noticed the amount of traffic to real places affiliated with hit reality TV shows like The Real Housewives, Top Chef, Shear Genius and The Millionaire Matchmaker.
If you like social competition and hitting up the latest hot spots in your ‘hood, give those hyperactive thumbs a rest and simply “check-in” on Foursquare.com. Bravo, and other new partnerships like Zagat, offer badges and prizes to viewers who frequent locations tagged with their brands. If you dominate the scene at your favorite venue, you may even become a mayor on Foursquare!
The question is… how did our audience relationship with broadcast programming and in person socializing get to this point? This type of viewer / venue relationship (i.e. media-inspired users generating content via social game play) wasn’t always this way. So let’s rewind for a moment.
Before telecommunications, people traveled for miles just to say hello or get the latest news. Then, radio revolutionized communications and brought together families over audio shows and eventually on the phone. After the telephone, the moving image brought our attention to our TV sets and reformed the living room gathering. Now, videos aggregate from TV to Internet, while friends watch and share videos online. Watching TV online has become easier than ever, and mobile video streaming is getting more seamless.
If you can record your TV shows anytime and mobile Internet is on its way to satellite domination, where does that leave good old fashioned in-person socializing? On the go of course! While many TV shows already connect their audience to their websites or live on-air contests via text, the complex plot of “life on the go” continues to thicken with shorter attention spans for regular programming. Foursquare is a great example of an online vehicle bridging the gap between TV broadcasting audiences, mobile media and face-to-face socializing.
And it doesn’t stop there. According to Foursquare Co-Founder Dennis Crowley, its partnership with Bravo is just the first of several media deals to come. With an innovative move like this from Foursquare and Bravo, we can expect broadcast programming to continue creating new opportunities to keep their audiences captivated. The key? Bringing the same unique experiences from reality TV into real life — with social media, of course! Thankfully, this brings us back to the beginning, where we find ourselves traveling to meet and enjoy the good old fashioned in-person company of our friends and family.
