Foursquare building self-serve tool for brand profiles
Foursquare gets requests from hundreds of brands per week looking to offer tips on their own branded profiles. In an interview with Advertising Age, CEO Dennis Crowley said the company is building a self-service tool where brands will be able to create their own profiles.
The current process for getting a branded page requires submitting an application to foursquare, who then must approve and manually create each one. The new tool will allow any brand to begin offering tips to foursquare users. Branded profiles are especially popular among companies that don’t have physical locations, like TV networks and magazines, or those that want to offer curated tips to their visitors, like universities or museums.
“We’re building self-service tools that allow brands to come in and say, ‘Oh, well I want to claim this particular brand on foursquare. I want to make my brand page. I want to add a whole bunch of tips. This is the experience I want to curate.’ And doing that in a way that we, foursquare the company, doesn’t need to be involved with it,” Crowley told Advertising Age. “They can just go ahead and do it on their own. I think that’s great because it opens it up for other folks for experimentation. It allows more brands to get in; we’re no longer the gatekeepers. I think it’s really just going to encourage folks to play with the service.”
The main difference between branded profiles and regular user profiles is that users can “follow” a brand, rather than becoming friends with them. It’s a one-way process that’s easier for both users and brands to complete, similar to “liking” a page on Facebook. Branded profiles also get a description box, a header image and their profile shows all the tips they’ve added instead of just those in the user’s current city.
In addition to branded profiles, foursquare is tweaking the self-serve tool for claiming venues. Crowley also spoke about the changes coming to the game itself:
“We really want to revisit a lot of the stuff that we’ve been doing with game mechanics, and points and badges. Really there’s a laundry list of things that need to get fixed in the service.”
Brands are already coming up creative ways to use their profiles — from coupon reminders to movie trivia — that add value for users. Opening up branded profiles will make it easier for them to become involved and get users to follow them.
Here’s the full video interview from Advertising Age:
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This is really great to see. Once this feature is implemented, I think we can expect to see a huge increase in the amount of brands using Foursquare. Definitely a great feature for smaller brands who have probably had a hard time getting Foursquare to listen thus far.
[...] Foursquare building self-serve tool for brand profiles – Foursquare gets requests from hundreds of brands per week looking to offer tips on their own branded profiles. In an interview with Advertising Age, CEO Dennis Crowley said the company is building a self-service tool where brands will be able to create their own profiles. [...]
Interested to see the future of this. The public is much more likely to join foursquare because that is what their favorite brand did. I hope this really helps user numbers!
And thanks for linking back to Texas A&M. Gig’em!
Any idea when this self-serve tool is expected to be implemented?
Probably in four to five weeks.
http://twitter.com/dens/status/22649293126
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What will be the cost for brands using the self-serve tool?
And will any brand be able to use it?
My understanding is that it will be free (for now, at least) and any brand will be able to use it.
Hi there,
I was wondering whether or not the self-serve tool had actually been rolled out yet. We can’t help waiting for it!
giovanni
Not yet. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s released.
Do you have an update on the launch for this feature? Thanks.
Sorry, I don’t. Last I heard was mid-September, but that’s obviously long since past.
[...] Un articolo molto interessante sulle pagine brand [...]
I work for a brand and I’m currently in the process of claiming our venues so this is great news and I’m eagerly awaiting his new tool along with tweaks to the self-serve tool for claiming venues.
Is there any update on when this new functionality is likely to be ready?
[...] sedan det utlovade releasen i September har vi väntat pÃ¥ att Foursquare ska släppa sitt “Self-service Tool”. Den gör nämligen sÃ¥ att företag kan claima platser, skapa profilsidor och badges utan [...]