foursquare

I was a big fan of Dodgeball, I was a big fan of m.playfoursquare.com, and I am even a fan of their SMS apps. Of course I like the iPhone App as well - I think the concept of making a game out of real life has a lot of legs. Foursquare has a long way to go however: - the app crashes like crazy - their data sucks - adding a business is a huge pain - etc. That being said, the Foursquare guys have done a hell of a lot with just a 2-3 person team, and I expect we'll see some neat things out of them now that they have announced funding.

This is a check-in, location and community app. Anytime you go to a restaurant, club, bar, coffee shop... you check-in. The more you check-in in different places, the more badges you get. So far, and after 3 weeks with the app I have won 5 badges (Local, Bender, Explorer, Adventurer and Newbie). Also, every business has a mayor, and it is the person with most check-ins in the place. ( I have already seen discounts and special offers given by businesses to foursquare mayors) When you check in and only if you want to, a post shows on your twitter telling where you are. In every check-in you decide if you want to tell your friends, to twitter or none. It's a fun application, but because I have few friends using it it's only fun for a while.

Love the idea of a large social game via mobile, love that's it a way to let u know where your friends are, love that you can show off the cool places you hang out at. don't like that a lot of place I go to haven't been added to their data place-- I feel like they could have scrapped Yelp or Citysearch for locations + addresses so users wouldn't have to input it themselves. It's a chore to type in the street address is a restaurant or bar. Wish you could either import it from your address book or have it sync with iPhone maps somehow, where when you look up an establishment, you can either add it to your phone book or Foursquare. Foursquare was spawned off of Dodgeball, an early location based service that would text you when friends or friends of friends were nearby or at the same bar as you. Pretty sweet idea from some NYU ITP students.