Foursquare Experiments With Charity-Based Game Mechanics

Foursquare is an iPhone application that allows people to "check in" and let their friends know where they are physically. At its heart, it's a tool for deepening relationships by allowing people to bump into one another with more frequency. Yesterday, TechCrunch wrote about how the company is exploring using charitable partnerships to deepen the user experience.

Unlike tools like Google's Latitude, Foursquare does not tap into GPS to automatically locate a person. Instead, it uses game mechanics to incentivize people to manually check in wherever they happen to be. You get points for checking in and adding new locations to their map, and you get badges like "Gym Rat" for checking in multiple times in specific locations or types of locations.

I've found myself strangely addicted to it, despite the fact that I only have four or five other friends who use it, which is validation - either of the smarts of their game mechanics or my generally pathetic addiction to new web tools.

People who check in the most are placed on a leaderboard, which is an ongoing tally of user activity that updates every week.

According to TechCrunch, Foursquare is now trying to find brands and companies to sponsor the leaderboard - paying a certain amount (>$0.03 per point) in exchange for having the leader board entirely customized to look as they want it to. All of that money would then be donated to charity. If this existed right now, last week New York City Foursquare users would have made $4,500 for charity.

The organization that the money will be donated to at first is Campinteractive - a nonprofit that does both outdoor and tech projects with inner-city youth. Foursquare is planning on partnering with Techies Give Back to process the donations.

I think it's a really cool experiment. The betting is that it could compel users to engage even more deeply and regularly with the site, as they know that every time they check in there is a tangible benefit for a great cause.

In a lot of ways, it's driven by the same idea animating the Virgance company Lend Me Some Sugar, which is trying to get big companies to sponsor social entrepreneurship contests instead of spending money on expensive advertising campaigns. The idea is about allowing individual people to spread the message, and to build the brand of the company that does good.

I already think Foursquare is a great example of the web 3.0 convergence of online and offline community, and I think this just demonstrates their instincts for the larger cultural zeitgeist that is ever more committed to social change.

(Photo: A rabid fan dresses up as the "Bender" badge on Foursquare for Halloween - from Whatleydude)