Starter kit: foursquare

I’ve always been the guy people turn to with technology questions. I read a lot of blogs and news sources and love to share that knowledge whenever possible. My good friend Rachel once told me I was a maven of technology. So keeping all that in mind I started making “starter kits” for people when they’d get a new phone or joined a service I was also on. The first one is foursquare. I thought I’d post it here as it could be helpful to anyone just joining or thinking of joining foursquare.

I love foursquare. I think it’s fun. Earning badges is a blast and it has really gotten me to explore my surroundings. I check it for recommendations all the time. Through my badge pursuits I’ve discovered some really tasty joints around town. I know a lot of people are afraid of privacy issues with location-based services but foursquare has done a really great job of safeguarding you and allowing you to control who’s seeing what. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been sending people after they join:

First, you can optionally share your check-ins and badges from foursquare to Facebook and Twitter. If you log into the foursquare website you can set up these options pretty easily. I usually share my mayorships and badges automatically and then pick and choose which check-ins I want shared from the app.

Next, www.aboutfoursquare.com is a great blog that covers all the latest and greatest foursquare news. They’ve also got some good guides for getting started and common questions.

If you’re curious about the badges you can earn and how to earn them check out Matter of Grey’s Badge List. Some badges require you to “follow” certain brand pages. Most of the instructions on that site spell it all out pretty well though.

In your badge pursuits these next few website might be helpful:
http://www.4sqmap.com/ — Shows all your check-ins, broken down by category and even on a map
http://www.onemorecheckin.com/ — Shows you what badges you could earn nearby and with how many more check-ins

Feel free to direct your questions to me and I’ll do my best to answer them. I’m also a super user so if you come across venues that are incorrect, let me know and I’ll clean them up (yup, I’m that big of a nerd). An extra pro tip for you: you can only earn mayorships with a profile picture. Enjoy!

There you have it. A guide to getting started on foursquare. I’ll post some more of these guides later. I’ve got a pretty handy iPhone starter kit too.

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