Foursquare heating up in Brazil
Jinfo Blog

By Nancy Davis Kho

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In an interview published on GigaOM on 5 July, the CEO of geolocation-based social networking site Foursquare said that the service is gaining traction in markets that are highly mobile, the most recent being Brazil. Co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley told GigaOM's Om Malik that almost half of Foursquare's 10 million users now come from outside the US and, Malik writes, "with the bulk of activity coming from Europe as a region and Japan as a country".

Crowley tells Malik that "the growth is organic" in Brazil, and that the number of businesses encouraging patrons to "check in" via Foursquare astounds him. In response to rapid growth in the Brazilian market, Foursquare has established a website aimed at the Brazilian market – http://www.foursquarebrasil.com.br/.

So what other markets are ripe for gaining traction? It would make sense to look to emerging markets where mobile penetration is relatively high – Turkey, Colombia and Indonesia, for example. But Foursquare won't have first-to-market advantage for long; with geolocation technologies becoming easier to access, local competitors with on the ground business relationships may give them a run for the money.

The solution? Figuring out how to branch out beyond the lure of checking into a spot repeatedly to become its virtual mayor. Foursquare and other geolocation players like Gowalla need to be thinking about how to make geolocation a component of meeting a broader information need, not its be-all and end-all.  Layering other data from the Cloud like reviews, reservation systems, movie reviews, and photo sharing may be the key to establishing longevity not just in its new markets but in the ones where it's already a household name.

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