Foursquare Gets Out the Vote and Builds Its Brand

More than 30,000 Foursquare users have checked in at 16,000+ polling places around the nation today. The popular mobile app showed users who logged in the closest polling station at the top of their local Places page. Users who checked in at these polling stations earned Foursquare's "I Voted" badge in return.

It would be easy to write this off as a publicity stunt. But the use of location suggestions and game mechanics to inspire user behavior fits perfectly with the core philosophy of Foursquare, while simultaneously extending its brand into new realms.

Mike Leotta, a Google (GOOG) employee in NYC, wrote about the experience on Twitter. "Sad as it may be, my biggest incentive to vote is to get the @foursquare badge. Well played, @dens, well played. " Dens is Dennis Crowley, a founder of Foursquare, who made it clear in a recent interview that he doesn't see anything sad or manipulative about altering his users' behavior through gaming elements like challenges and rewards.

"One of the things that we're finding is that when people send their Foursquare check ins out to Twitter and to Facebook, it can drive behaviors. If I check into a coffee shop all the time, my friends are going to be like, hey, I want to go to that coffee shop," Crowley told Read Write Web. "We're thinking the same thing could happen en masse if you start checking into these polling stations, if you start broadcasting that you voted, it may encourage other friends to go out there and do something."

Foursquare didn't monetize this activity, as Twitter did with the #Election hash tag, which was purchased for the day by the Washington Post. But it did create a interactive map to chart activity across the country and provide granular detail like gender. The map, which tallies the number of users that have checked in, attracted attention from political media outlets around the country, spreading the Foursquare brand far beyond the tech community that usually covers and reads about it.