News: Foursquare implementation #4s

Written by Mathys van Abbe on December 1st 2009 at 13:18 UTC.

Sorry, content has become Queen.

I have stressed this in some Dutch interviews over the last days, but the opening of the doors of content has started and can’t be stopped.

2010 is about context. Everybody needs to open up their silos. We’re working really hard on an even more open Mobypicture. In the beginning of next year, we’ll release a version of Moby using as many of the open standards as possible. Think of OpenSocial, oEmbed, Activitystrea.ms, Creative Commons, oAuth, OpenID etc.

This will help add rich context to your digital footprints. Think about geolocation and spots, friends lists and circles of trust accross different networks, better semantic relations between what you’ve shown interest in and what you are looking for.

We love Open API’s and just implemented a new one:

foursquare logo Foursquare implementation #4s

Today launch our Foursquare integration. We love Foursquare for its playfulness and the serendipitousness.
With Foursquare you can let your friends know where you are in a fun and simple way. If you go to a bar or restaurant you can fire up the foursquare app for iPhone or Android (and a Blackberry beta) or go to their mobile site. Here you checkin to the place you’re at. Foursquare then will let your friends know where you are, so they can join you. You can leave virtual tips at these venues for friends and you can become the Mayor of a place (the Mayor is the guy or girl who checked in to that venue the most frequent in the last two months). Plus you get points for your checkins and you can earn badges for multiple sometimes ‘mysterious’ tasks. (like being checked in to a venue with three people from the opposite sex earns you the Player badge).

How Foursquare describes it themselves:

It’s foursquare! Think: 50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game.  We wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things in and challenges you to explore cities in different ways.  There’s a lot of experimenting here, so bear with us as we try to figure it all out (and thanks!)

But now the most important part:

We’ve made it even more simple and fun! With the integration you can checkin to a place using a content posting!

How do you checkin with a Moby posting work?
1. First link your account using oAuth on the services page on Mobypicture.

Afbeelding 50

2. Then make a posting using Moby like you normally do, but make sure your geo location is turned ON!

now add:

#4s and #[venuename] to your posting (in either the title or description)

For example:

Afbeelding 51

http://www.mobypicture.com/user/mathys/view/5701641

Why did we add this integration? Back to the context!

By assisting you to checkin at Foursquare we learn a little bit extra about your adventure. When you are inside the geolocation features don’t work in the best possible way. By using your Foursquare location we can pinpoint the postings you make very precise to the venue you’re at. Thus we’re helping you to share your adventure even better.

Screen shot 2009-12-01 at 12.00.50 PM

Next:

We’ll also soon add the venues to the Moby group stream and the groups to our API, so our third party developer (over 400 today) can use the group/venue data to include other ways of geolocating content. (this is very usefull for postings taken inside buildings)

Foursquare is working on showing the posted Moby media in the timeline and their apps (this is coming soon)

Afbeelding 52

Screen shot 2009-12-01 at 12.01.09 PM

Spots from other social networks

So what about other social networks with spots? Actually we will start implementing more spot/venue related sites from now on. (think: Hyves spots, Spot2.be, Brightkite, etc.) Based on the services you’ve setup on Mobypicture, we’ll present you the spots of these particular sites.

So try it now!

If you’re not on Foursquare yet, get account here.

When you’re already on Foursquare, please setup your Foursquare service and try it out!