Foursquare and the Wall Street Journal team to launch an “Add to Foursquare” button
You’ve seen buttons around the internet to share articles on Twitter or Facebook; now Foursquare has joined the party with an “Add to Foursquare” button. They’ve partnered with the Wall Street Journal to add the button to select articles that can be tied to Foursquare venues, like reviews of restaurants, bars and events.
Clicking the “Add to Foursquare” button adds an item to your to-do list that includes a tip from the Wall Street Journal. You can see the to-dos you’ve added (near your current location) on your user page and you’ll be reminded about them when you check in at the venue. The to-do includes a link back to the original article. You can see a the button in action on this article.
Foursquare is testing the Add to Foursquare button with only the Wall Street Journal at this time, but it’s easy to see how other sites could integrate this into their offerings. In fact, as a test, we’ve already started by adding it to our post about the Six Flags partnership. Foursquare will begin rolling the button out to more partners soon.
I just realized (after using the button to add a To Do) that this actually works very differently than adding a “To Do” from Foursquare’s website.
Checking the “Add as To Do” box on foursquare.com adds the item to my To Do List, but credited to the Wall Street Journal. Adding it from the button on the WSG website is creating a brand new to do in my name that copies the text of the WSG’s original tip.
Weird design decision. It reduces the ability to track the viral spread of tips through the system. Foursquare may be cutting off a future source of interesting data there.