Have you ever wondered how you can get your favorite store or cafe to notice how much you like their place? Or do you want other people to know how much you like the clothes at your favorite boutique? How about claiming to be a place’s most frequent customer? It’s possible with FourSquare.

FourSquare lets you check in at places, share experiences with your contacts, mark your territory, and even temporarily be the mayor of a place.

Using your mobile phone, iPhone, Blackberry, or Android gadget, you can check in at any place and let people know where you are right at that moment.

By checking in you let people know your location, what it is, and tips and information that you’d like them to know about that place. Hey! It’s useful for friends, family members, and even couple who’d like to keep tabs on each other.

Suggest the best-selling food and drinks at the restaurant you are eating at. Give them an instant review by posting a brief shout out when you check. Or how about a thumbs down for icky food or poor service? Maybe there’s a sale at the mall that you are visiting or a nice new indie film at the cinema. How about sharing your favorite song to sing at the videoke? Shout it out by checking in through FourSquare.
And you get alerts on where your friends are and what they are doing. Similarly, they also know where you are and get to read your tips and information.

Plus, you can connect your FourSquare account to your Twitter and Facebook accounts so every time you check in, your Twitter followers and your Facebook contacts, also receive updates.

And you get points every time to check in. The first time you check in, you earn points. You earn extra points by being the first to check in at a place or by going to multiple locations in one day. Being the most frequent person to check in at a location earns you not just points, but the mayorship of that place. Some establishments give perks and special deals to their mayors. Cool, right?

The more points you earn, the more badges you also get. And yes, you earn badges for discovering new places, travelling to distant places, and even just by going to one place all the time.

It’s fun and brings out the competitive nature in us. My friends fight it out for mayorships in our city. While we do not have perks for being mayor yet, we hope our local establishments get in with the program. After all, frequent customers who check in via FourSquare help out their business in getting promoted to, right?

FourSquare allows developers to create apps to make checking in more fun. There’s already a plug in to publish your check ins on your self-hosted WordPress blog.

Yes, getting stalked is becoming easier. Thing is you get to choose who can see your check ins and checking in is optional. So your creepy stalkers won’t get to follow you around. And yes, your mom or girlfriend won’t know if you lied about being at that basketball game.
Definitely, FourSquare has made it easier to get stalked by our friends. But if being stalked is this much fun, who wouldn’t want to get followed, right?

Source: LINK