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What’s missing in Foursquare

Here is my humble opinion on what is missing in Foursquare
as it is today for it to develop. I'm a foursquare user since a few
months, and I enjoyed, at first, the game part, with the badges and
the mayorships and so on... but it's not enough. Here is my
analysis of what could be done to give it a real interest, for user
and for venue owners: Let's cut to the chase, I'm talking about
discounts. The problem as a venue owner is that you can either give
a discount to any user that checks in, a href="http://www.cyberpresse.ca/voyage/201012/16/01-4353126-un-hotel-offre-des-reductions-aux-clients-qui-senregistrent-via-foursquare.php"
target="_blank">hotel started doing that (sorry, it's
in French), or you give a discount to the mayor. Foursquare needs
to enable intermediate situations. Either create a hierarchy of
sub-mayors, and sub-sub-mayors. Or even better, enable venue owners
to define the number of "members" there are. These n members will
be the n number of people who come the most often. The actual mayor
system is the member with n=1. Doing that enables the venue owner
to create a discount to it's 30 best customer (at least the 30 who
come the most often). But there is something else venues could do,
is give a discount to first time comers, or first time tippers in a
venue! In a nutshell, once the discounts will develop, there will
be a new reason for users to check in more often on Foursquare.
But, on top of that, we could add another feature which would be
interesting, on top of Foursquare: the ability not to checkin a
venue, but to say that you plan on going
there. Say to your network that you will be in this venue, in
the near future. This way, people can change their plans and try to
meet. As of today, you know that a good friend of yours is in a bar
across town. That's not very helpful to meet him.