Foursquare is a service, which basically aims at letting one’s friends know where one is, a checking-in service. But noting its developments lately, it can be noted that Foursquare has been engaging efforts to make itself more and more about discovery. The same can be noted as it introduced Foursquare lists, followed by the all-new Radar function, which makes use of one’s location to give activity suggestions.
The growth is seemingly on an upper scale, but still its best fun lies in one wanting to be the gamification – points and badges. Many Foursquare users find it to be the best thing on Foursquare. Such users can now note an up-gradation, which would motivate them to spend more time and engage further activities on Foursquare. Reason being that Foursquare has announced an upgrade to its badges system.
It was detailed that a subset of the Foursquare badges that one can now earn with check-ins are called “expertise badges.” It even includes things like “Zoetrope” and “7-10 Split”. The former here is for checking into a desired amount of theaters, while the latter is for checking into a certain amount of bowling alleys. In all, there are 24 current expertise badges. Each and every badge reward users for “who they are and what they know.”
The official blog had a briefing on how it would work.
The rules are the same for all your areas of expertise:
You hit Level 1 for checking in five times to a place in a category, or three unique places.
Level 2 is for five unique places.
And from there, every level up is five more unique places, so you get rewarded for exploration!
For instance, I’ve earned a level 2 Bookworm badge for checking into 5 unique bookstores. You can now view your leveled expertise badges in the “trophy case.” Yet again, an example can be noted that if one is looking for a pizza place in a strange town, he/she would probably give more weight to a tip from a level 8 Pizzaiolo over a level 2, right?
The rewards are for those users who continue to explore their interests on the service.
The checking-in service provider has even unveiled three new expertise badges today: Herbivore, Hot Tamale and Bento. Earning the badges would still be an uphill task.
Mashable.com had a video created specially for the detailing of the leveling up of badges, which can be viewed as below:
Foursquare Head of Product Alex Rainert was of the view that the new badge system would only encourage people to explore their surroundings. He asserted that people want to level up and concluded saying, “and in order to do so, they have to push outside of their comfort zone.”
Foursquare noted that the site had plans to even add the leveling functionality to other aspects of the site, which includes leveling up when multiple people complete a Tip a user has left at a particular venue. However, that is still in the planning stage and might take considerable time to get in the site.