Should Foursquare head into the CRM-market?

Some time ago I wrote about the usefulness of Foursquare. At that time I shared I use Foursquare for fun, but it’s not really useful to me.

Just recently something popped up that does show Foursquare is useful to me. Part of my work is to visit customers and potential customers. Some of the customers aren’t ready to do business with us at the time I visit them and ask me to come back later. So, after some time, I visit them again. Of course the company I work for has a CRM tool, but it’s a pain to go to that system before you visit the customer to check when you were there the last time and what you discussed. I usually just look up my notes stored somewhere on my iPad.

But it is useful to know when I was there the last time. When I arrive at a customer I check in to Foursquare. And what does it say? ‘Welcome back! Last time you were here was in <date>.’ The interesting thing is the conversation with the customer almost always starts with: ‘Good to have you back, when was the last time we met?’ Foursquare helps me answer that question.

Which makes me wonder. Isn’t Foursquare a great CRM tool? Isn’t Foursquare the perfect place to store (and share?) information about customers? Currently this is not possible in Foursquare. You can share a tip, which is public. Not good for customer data. But if you could, Foursquare could not only say ‘welcome back’, but also tell you what you discussed the last time you were there.

Does this make sense? Curious to hear your thoughts.

Which Social Media do Millenials use?

Giving a guest lecture is great fun, I find. I recently had the chance to interact with about 60 college students. They were in their second or third year. The topic of the lecture was social media use within company. So, Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business. My slides can be found here (in Dutch...).

I kicked off my lecture with some open questions. I'd like to share the answers to one question with you. I was curious what social tools they use themselves to get things done in their lives. With all the talk about millennials being digital natives (or aren't they), easily moving in the social space, organizing their life and work with these tools, etc I thought I'd see if this if the case in practice.
I shared what I got from the students on Google+. In sum, this is what they told me.

Of the 60 students:

• 40 use Twitter
• Almost all use Facebook
• Just over half use Hyves (Dutch social network)
• 1 uses a bookmarking tool
• 2 blog
• 0 have a wiki (although all have experience using wiki's)
• 6 use Google+
• 2 use Foursquare
• 16 are on LinkedIn

Let me reflect on this a bit.
Of course these results are not statistically valid. It's just 60 students from one college in a city in Holland telling me what they use. But I'll will poll them two more times this year. (Great idea from Chee Chin Liew!) Let's see what we learn from the trends in this class.
I didn't have time for a real discussion about the data. Of course you wonder why only 2 blog, for instance. LinkedIn is not much used either. Does this point to the fact that LinkedIn is a business network for people looking for a job or that have a job? This poll also shows Foursquare, Google+ and bookmarking are hardly used. The students using Google+ said they signed up to see what Google+ is and find out if it has added-value compared to their current toolset. Facebook is very popular and the Dutch network Hyves is clearly becoming an echo chamber for them. Several said they stopped using Hyves or just use it to be reminded of their friend's birthday.

Interesting data, don't you think? If you have any question I should ask them, please let me know!

Foursquare Useless (for now)

Location-based services are very interesting, I find. And I see a big future for them. The fact that you can connect content to a location is intriguing. It's even more fascinating to realize that it's not just content linked to a location, but also the person sharing the content is linked to it.

I've been using Foursquare since the beginning, checking in regularly (now 1379 checkins). I changed my location sharing strategies several times: from sharing everything on Twitter to sharing nothing and everything in between. Looking at the numbers location-based services are growing, but they're still a niche. It's great to see businesses experimenting with these services. Starting now will give them an edge when things go mainstream.

But has it been useful to me? Has it made me more productive? Have I met more interesting people? Did I get interesting discounts? In short: No, it didn't. Let me explain.

• It's great to get badges every now-and-then, to see where others are hanging out (although I hardly check the checkin feed, only when it pops up on Twitter). Getting a badge is fun and encouraging. But it's not enough to make a service useful to me. The same goes for the leaderboard.
• Checking in to (unknown) places is fun as well. It feels like discovering something new. Checking in to the same place over-and-over is no fun. It would be better if that was automated.
• The push notifications are kind of useful. It gives you some ambient awareness where your 'friends' are. Only once I met up with someone based on their Foursquare checkin. In another case my checkin led to a meeting later on during that day. ('Hey, you're in Amsterdam, shall we meet?') Wouldn't it be more useful to also be able to share where you plan to be during the day, making friend encounters more probable? Like TripIt or Forecast.
• Not very many people use Foursquare. At least not in Holland and the places that I visit. (Some say there are 150.000 users in Holland. Others say 175.000 or just 20.000.) So, I found myself following people that I don't even know just to increase the likelihood I'd meet someone somewhere.

This doesn't imply Foursquare is useless in general. As I said, it has huge potential and some companies are successfully using  these services to promote their brand, services and products. We have all heard of the 'free coffee for mayors' and 'get a book for free after 10 checkins' offers. (I collected some examples here and here.) I just don't think it's useful now. This is clearly only the start. And I think that's the problem for these services as well. We've just started to understand what social media means for our lives and for business. Location-based services is a next wave to understand. It's just to early. At least in Holland it is.

So, what are your experiences with location-based services? Are they helpful? What sharing strategies do you apply? And is my perspective biased by the fact that I live in Holland? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

In the meantime, I'll keep using Foursquare, hoping for better times!