I went all out a couple of weeks ago and made a prediction on the ‘next big thing’. No, it wasn’t Tony Abbott. I was talking about Foursquare. I won’t go into what Foursquare is but Mark Pollard has a nice overview of the functionality and his experience with it here.

I just want to rattle off a few dot points on why I think Foursquare will change the marketing game for business. Here’s how:

• It’s going to make social media relevant for small business. Ma and Pa’s Local Fish Shop will no longer be able to ignore social media because they’re small and rarely discussed. The talk is a comin’. Foursquare isn’t all about long term brand building and publicity stunts. It is about immediacy, locality and decision making. If I’m in a new area looking for lunch, I’m going to assess where the positive reviews are coming from and avoid anywhere with negative reviews. Decision made in under 60 seconds and without even seeing a shop front.

• You have 60 seconds to make me happy. Following on from the immediacy, it’s not only knowing what is being said about your business but helping shape it. I get served up a dud pizza, I’ll write a review while I’m sitting at the table. I get booted out of a nightclub, there’ll be a nice alcoholic fuelled rant in the cab home (not that this has ever happened…) As a business owner you will have a very limited amount of time to rectify the situation. If you treat your customers like shit, you’ll cop shit.

• Foursquare will feed other media. It’s going to hurt directory sites like my247 and whereis. It’s also going to halt the progress of apps like AroundMe. When Foursquare reaches a mass audience it will be the primary source for peer to peer reviews. These sites can try to fight it. However, I think they will feed into it by publishing feeds (similar to Twitter feeds) from Foursquare to supplement their location based directories.

• It’s not about the desktop anymore. The Foursquare site is ordinary. But the mobile application is great. Mobile delivers more content, more relevance and more functionality than the homepage. We’ll see a greater focus towards mobile as the primary driver as augmented reality and location base services become more widely available. Foursquare will lead the commercial charge for local and social mobile applications.

• We’re going to creep ourselves out. It’s intrusive. Naturally, people are going to freak about their privacy. Mark Pollard makes a great point of having no control of who and what people can tag. Can someone publish where you live? There will be legal cases (a la Google Street View) which will seek to answer these questions. We’re going to see new laws and guidelines about what kind of information can and can’t be published.

So there’s my initial thoughts on how I think Foursquare will impact business and their marketing. Do you agree? Have you got another point to add? Or is Foursquare just a storm in a Second Life teacup?

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