foursquare Now Notifies with Radar

foursquare founder Dennis Crowley hasn’t made it a secret that he’s worked towards making his location-based service notify and recommend in real-time in a form of crowdsourcing-on-demand. With the launch of the Explore feature a user could gain recommendations based on popularity, friends’ check-ins, similar likes, lists and tips, and with yesterday’s launch of foursquare Radar, these recommendations and reminders can now be pushed to any phone using Apple’s latest mobile OS.

Leveraging the new iOS 5 “region monitoring”, foursquare’s new v4.0 for iPhone now includes the option to opt-in to Radar. Once opted in the same engine used to power Explore monitors your location and compares it to:

• Tips you’ve marked as a To-Do
• Lists you’ve subscribed to
• Lists you’ve created
• Venues featuring three or more friends

Any of these items then appears as a push notification on your iPhone, alerting you that you’re near somewhere you’ve either expressed interest in, or in which friends are gathering.

The power here for businesses is immense, obviously balanced with the continuous issue that foursquare still isn’t a largely utilized social network/application. But foursquare Radar now removes the need to seek a recommendation, instead delivering automatically. It suddenly places increased importance in two areas:

1. Garnering Tips from patrons
2. Encouraging patrons to follow Lists or add To-Dos

Tips have long been one of foursquare’s most important features, providing insight into the best of any particular location. Any tip can be turned into a To-Do with a single click both through use of the app and through the little used foursquare plug-ins. Lists, still a relatively new feature, are an additional treasure chest of opportunity. Who wouldn’t follow a “Best Coffee in Seattle” or “Best Pizza in Chicago” list before a pending trip? Suddenly that info becomes a pushed notification with foursquare Radar.

Expected to arrive on additional smartphones soon, Radar becomes the next stage of location-based marketing, and one of the most inviting new features for businesses. Those that jump on early may, indeed, find benefits that outweigh the mild time investment.