Starbucks teams up with Foursquare
You have to give Foursquare credit, the one-year startup is earning plenty of mainstream attention in making the case for location-based services. First they get a write up in the NYT for adding a douchebag badge to their collection of badges, now they get coffee behemoth Starbucks on board to offer location-based deals and rewards to customers.
Starting today (in the US) Starbucks will offer customers who check in at their coffee shops “rewards,” including a “Batista badge.” They plan to add more meaningful rewards like invitations to special events, photo-sharing and online reputation scores. I expect they’ll take it up another notch to deepen the brand experience. It wouldn’t surprise me if in the near future I could use Foursquare to see what artist, track title and album is being played at that moment in the coffee shop I’ve checked into. Maybe one day I’ll be able to give a free coffee (or store credit) to a fellow Foursquarer who is also checked into the store.
In any case, congrats to Foursquare for landing such a big name and kudos to Starbucks for seeing the huge potential of location-based marketing.
Photo credit: Flickr user visual panic.