Kim: Practicum Post #2

I was just getting used to automatically declaring my location and checking in instantly when I reached another building, but I’ve just been confused on what approaches I wanted to take on this project.  Then, just after walking from the lecture (interestingly enough), I found a message on the bulletin board about Foursquare:

If anyone’s on Foursquare, you should try to become mayor of Grainger for this sweet treat. I mean, the soda is not that exciting, but I’d sure like the 10$ off. So basically, if you reign as mayor that week you get a free soda and if you reign for a few consecutive weeks (and based on my attempts at becoming mayor, its EXTREMELY HARD), you get 10$ off and your name will be posted.

On the same note, I think that the mayorship process is very interesting to look at.  I’ve become mayor of my home, and just recently mayor of my whole apartment.  The formal definition of becoming a mayor is being the person who checked in most in the last 60 days – but interestingly enough, only one check-in per day is allowed.  I easily got the mayor ship after 58 check ins for lucky, but I could never ever get mayorship for places like Vilas or Grainger.  So I guess this is a challenge I’m up for. 

And, the Grainger Mayorship challenge reminded me that people like me who are declaring their locations online are NOT the only ones that are gaining from this experience.  Other than that, this morning, I've just recieved a 10$ coupon to Starbucks for being the mayor of my apartment.  I think that it's really important to consider the different venues and how they can ues these location services to promote their shops.  For example, I know that different places like Fresh Market offers 5$ discount to any American Express card user and different places like Kaivalya Yoga offers a free yoga class for every 25 check ins.  I think that its a good way to have people come just to check in and check out the place. It's free advertising.  And, in an interesting cycle, when people come in, they would write a tip (mostly I would assume recommending the place once they've got a discount or something) and that would lead to more potential customers for coming.