This is the technology stone age

Over two weeks ago Nate Bonilla-Warford (of Foursquare Day fame) and I started telling the world about our SXSW panel proposal (Today’s the last day to vote! Please vote if you haven’t and please tell a friend!).

Since then, we’ve had over 1,000 clicks on our bit.ly links and have received a ton of retweets, tweets, facebook posts, likes and comments posted from people wanting to share the news about the panel (including a tweet from a certain someone that uh, had a large effect on our stats as shown in the pic – thanks @dens and @foursquare!).

And that’s only the measurable stuff – we don’t even know how many votes we got. I am overwhelmed and super excited about the response for this and INCREDIBLY appreciative of all the support! So I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone, literally! (Or atleast, as best as I can from the logfiles I have available – and if I missed anyone please accept my apologies and thanks!) So I’m proud to say, and I’m sure I speak for Nate here as well, THANK YOU everyone for voting and spreading the word!

THANKS TO

• _Signalfire_
• 4SqATL
• 4SqCHAT
• 4sqchicago
• 4sqday
• 4sqdayTampa
• 4SqINDY
• 4sqPUNE
• 4SqREADING
• 4squarebadges
• aajain
• aboutfoursquare
• actiongirl
• af
• aikwae
• ajproc
• Aliblue
• ArieRich
• askemmi
• BarCampTampa
• BOOSTBERRy75
• bostonmarketer
• BrightEyesTampa
• ButtercupD
• CMajor
• DailyStickers
• danstpeter
• davidbabylon
• davidgallant
• DeKoning
• dens
• dhrosen
• dkrumlauf
• doorley
• dougmeacham
• drewschulthess
• dudud_dud
• elizabethstiles
• envirga
• foursquare
• foursquaregames
• highstartgroup
• hust0058
• Joe_Craig
• john_jordan
• kelleylynnk
• kitson
• kurara_haizi
• LAStang
• laurenkgray
• LBSchat
• LeoSnets
• MaraPiazza
• marco_wagner
• MarkDearborn
• mbloomstein
• meeshsparks
• megankeate
• MicroArts
• Mocha_SL
• monicawright
• mr_lbs
• Mrs_Navarro
• MrShri
• MrsLaurenKates
• NateBW
• paulspicer
• PeriphVis
• PeterGetman
• PinkTipi
• Portsmouth4sq
• redheadjessica
• ryanhodgson
• sandraproulx
• schneidermike
• sfurusho
• shwen
• SparkfireDesign
• starshaped
• TheDataDoc
• thesleepyvegan
• Tpapi
• tuohy
• waynesutton
• yts
• ytsAlt

A very special EXTRA thanks to Monica Wright for encouraging me to submit a panel idea, Nate Bonilla-Warford for joining me to make this panel legit and to Jessica Barnett and Margot Bloomstein for all the guidance, support and ideas.

The first round of selected panels will be formally announced September 20th, so we’ll keep you posted. But regardless of whether we’re selected let’s keep the Foursquare Day conversation going – and I hope to see YOU at SXSW! Thanks again!!!

In case you haven’t heard, it’s SXSW panel voting season. This year (thanks to Monica Wright’s encouragement) I’ve submitted a panel that combines three of my favorite subjects, SXSW (My trip there this year blew me away!), foursquare (you know I’m addicted!) and Foursquare Day (zomg you didn’t know I was all up in that?). It’s titled Foursquare Day: Realizing the Location-Based Services Revolution. Foursquare Day founder Nate Bonilla-Warford will be co-presenting with me on the proposed panel! (UPDATE: Voting ends THIS Friday night so vote now!)

With special thanks to the thoughts and insights from Foursquare Day co-organizer Jessica Barnett and SXSW alum Margot Bloomstein (who has her own awesome panel up for vote!) Nate and I were able to put together a kickass proposed panel (atleast foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley thinks so! [Thanks @dens!]). The panel discusses the current and future possibilities of Location-Based Services, using Foursquare Day 2010 as a case study for how we helped accelerate that future and discusses how YOU can help realize the full potential future through participating in Foursquare Day 2011! Please check out our panel and vote for it! (Be sure to leave a comment here or on the panel picker if you do, thanks!)

Now, as you know, Facebook launched Facebook Places last week, and during the launch event they shared the stage with foursquare (and other partners) to speak about possibly integrating with Facebook Places. Now comes the ensuing discussion about foursquare’s relevance now that Facebook will be deploying Location-Based Services to their 500,000,000 users. Given the panel topic and our thesis about Foursquare Day 2011 I feel that I need to weigh in on the subject: I don’t think that foursquare is going to go away anytime soon. I think that Facebook Places will either integrate smoothly with foursquare to their mutual benefit or foursquare will march on without them to continued success.

On one side of the argument I think that the opportunity for foursquare here is tremendous. Facebook included foursquare at their Places launch event and appear to want them to integrate with their Places service in some meaningful way. They’ve also opened the door up for others to integrate as well (Gowalla, MyTown and Yelp so far). Effectively Facebook has handed the keys to their 500 million users to all these services. Given Facebook’s simplistic “check in and find out where your friends are checked in” service model I think there is a very strong possibility that Facebook intends to completely leave “value-added” experiences like badges, discounts and mayorships to 3rd parties to deliver. This might play out in the way Facebook applications have played out – 3rd parties would compete on the merit of their value-adding check in experiences through the marketplace of Facebook users choosing to integrate their service, or not. Given this opportunity the future is bright for foursquare: Facebook Places integration means that foursquare’s user base can grow as Facebook Places goes (which is already happening, by virtue of Facebook Places being a mainstream LBS educator). A win, win.

Now on the other hand, there is the possibility that Facebook and foursquare will never play nice and/or Facebook Places will not become a force for foursquare to reckon with. Some of these points were explored during the August 24th #4SqCHAT (which I strongly encourage everyone, especially fans of foursquare or LBS, to check out). I found the discussion to be very interesting- here are some tweet-highlights that shed light on this “other side of the coin”-

To recap, the feeling is that Facebook Places is currently just barely viable, Mashable readers atleast still prefer foursquare, yet if only 1% of Facebook adopts Places it’ll be bigger than foursquare. One of foursquare’s opportunities here is to convert Facebook Places users (as I discussed above). But hope for Facebook Places integration should be tempered by the fact that Facebook and Twitter have not played nicely in the past. Of course, since only 1% adoption makes Facebook Places huge the business opportunity is also huge, but it if only businesses are excited about this (I too am guilty of this, thinking from a marketing perspective and being excited there more than anything) then that’s a bad sign. This led the group to think on motives behind why foursquare was created versus Facebook Places, which pointed out that the spirit behind each yields different community reactions (Facebook rebellion as a movement versus Foursquare Day as a movement).

With either possibility, Facebook Places integrating smoothly with foursquare to their mutual benefit or foursquare marching on without them to continued success, it’s pretty clear that foursquare does not need to check out of the Location-Based Services game. Facebook Places may earn the “uber-mega-super-duper swarm” badge for having a larger user base, they won’t take over as mayor anytime soon. However by growing the LBS community, be it through Facebook or foursquare, we all stand to benefit- and that’s why I’ve proposed the SXSW panel. Please give it a vote, spread the word and let us know what you think!

Today has been a foursquare kinda day for me (not foursquare day, that’s different). Today I wore my, cherished, favorite foursquare shirt (that I won at SXSWi by literally playing foursquare on the street with the foursquare team), I got to register a new venue on foursquare as well as log 5 check ins (including checking into a totally new venue for me [nope, it was not the one I setup]), AND I got to spend some time exploring a hot new foursquare analytics tool from a hot social marketing software company. (disclaimer: my good pal CMajor tipped me off to this because she knows I love foursquare and she works for Awareness.)

That said, onward with the awesomeness:

After re-confirming that I am, indeed, the mayor of all 3 MicorArts checkin locations (sans MicroArts SA of course), I started to explore this tool and realized I could use it to find out some awesome stuff that I can trot out to possibly get brands to pay more attention to foursquare and to start maximizing the value of the foursquare opportunity they’ve got in front of them (while helping to grow foursquare at the same time [which, in case you don't know me, is something I'm passionate about]).

Let’s start with Planet Fitness. Take a look at their foursquare analytics. Over 400 venus have been registered with more than a third of those venues having 50 or more checkins. That kind of active check in distribution is similar to Starbucks! Granted, there are over 16,000 starbucks venues registered and Starbucks is a foursquare sponsor, but still- there is a reason they are a sponsor- because people love checking in at Starbucks. And you know what, Planet Fitness? People love checking in their too- so why don’t you step up and recognize? I know you’re atleast aware of foursquare. But think of how great it could be to formally make foursquare part of the Planet Fitness experience! As the video in that link shows, being mayor of your Planet Fitness is awesome, and desirable. Us foursquare users who are also PF members know this. But Planet Fitness, you could harness this desire and bring it to the rest of the smartphone-toting Planet Fitness members (and potential members!) and create so much demand you’ll have to create new franchise rules to accomodate it! Ok, I can’t guarantee that kind of demand :P – but think of the possibilities!

The other brand I wanted to highlight is, Cumberland Farms. Take a look at their foursquare analytics. The check in distribution is similar to McDonalds’ foursquare analytics – about a quarter of the 314 Cumberland Farms venus have had 11+ check ins. WIth only a slightly higher distribution of checkins in their favor, McDonalds embraced the Foursquare Day movement (and heck, they even became an early adopter of Facebook’s yet-to-be-launched location based service). But where is Cumberland Farms with their location based services…ahem…foursquare strategy? While I have to hand it to them for their pretty fun and effective Facebook page, I’ve got to say: Cumberland Farms, look at the numbers! You have a great Foursquare opportunity in front of you and you need to take advantage of it! Here’s an idea- how about free chill zone for the mayor? (disclaimer: I’m toooootally the mayor of my Cumberland Farms- but that’s only a small reason why I want Cumberland Farms to jump into foursquare :) ). Atleast experiment with it guys–at the very least, I’d like to see some participation in next year’s Foursquare Day. The opportunity is yours to make happen!

So, what about you? What brands would you like to see take advantage of the foursquare opportunity? Let’s talk about it and perhaps we can make a game plan for how we can get them involved!