Foursquare: Not In the Boonies, Yet

I was out and about yesterday afternoon and opened up Foursquare on my iPhone to check-in at Target, when I saw one of those “SPECIAL NEARBY” icons — or whatever it says. I’d never seen one of them in the Tri-Cities, so I was kind of excited to see what local business had finally done something outside the box by offering a Foursquare discount.

Sadly, it wasn’t a local business.

It was a Starbucks deal, part of a nationwide promotion they’re doing on Foursquare. Oh, well. I’ll drink Starbucks once in a while, but this offer didn’t do anything for me.

I live in a relatively small metro area. The latest estimate I’ve seen is that we have about 240,000 people across the Tri-Cities and in the nearby suburbs. That’s not really small, but it’s hardly big city, either. To my knowledge, no local business is doing anything on Foursquare. I could be wrong; it’s not like I spend all day driving around the entire region using Foursquare. But even if any local businesses here are using Foursquare, it’s a tiny percentage of our small business population.

What about you? Where do you live, and have you found many small businesses actively using Foursquare to promote offers and reward frequent customers? Comments are open. I’d love to hear stories from your neck of the woods.