Skip to main content

Poorsquare brings Foursquare deals to the masses

poorsquareLocation is one of social networking’s hottest trends. It’s been redefining how we use the Internet, putting digital platforms to tangible, real-world use. But let’s face it, location-based services exactly known for saving you money. The entire Foursquare scheme is to elevate customer loyalty, getting users to frequent locations and giving businesses a reason to partner with the site on deals. At its core, it’s a cycle that largely gets users to spend more money.

The likes of Groupon, Yelp, and AirBnb are no different: They all wrap location around e-commerce. It’s not just about where you are — it’s about what you’re going to buy there. So something like Poorsquare was inevitable.

Poorsquare is little more than a Foursquare hack that was created at the Reinventing Local hackathon by Andrew Pinzler and Jeff Novich. Basically, the application is a Foursquare-powered search engine that rifles through the network to find seriously discounted items and freebies in your neighborhood (that is, if your neighborhood is located in New York—the site says 100 new cities are on the way).

You can search Poorsquare by location, type of discount, how many check-ins are required, and if you need to bring friends. If you find yourself alone in Astoria New York, Poorsquare tells us you can get a free small fry at Burger King as well as a free shot at Tantra Lounge in exchange for nothing more than your first-time check-ins.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Molly McHugh
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Before coming to Digital Trends, Molly worked as a freelance writer, occasional photographer, and general technical lackey…
Belly wants to reinvent the customer loyalty system

Since location-based deals first appeared on the horizon, a new wave of e-commerce companies have been making a play for small businesses' business. The likes of Groupon, Google Offers, and LivingSocial (and the endless amount of clones) have been leveraging their assets to convince local retailers that they have what it takes not only to increase sales but to add a little social flare to the companies in question.
How effective this is has been heavily debated. It’s gotten to the “Groupon is bad for America!” point for detractors, who argue this discount-based culture is creating a dangerous attitude in consumers and a risky business model for retailers. Vendors are largely fed up being asked to participate with these various daily discount sites and increasingly wary of the effects: who is this setup really benefitting? Who is getting the return customers?
Enter, Belly.  The rewards-based service, which launches today, wants to replace the stamp card, and actually helps small businesses attack the digital incentive market. Step one: outfit participatng retailers with an iPad (yes, that comes with your membership).
After that, the basics of Belly might sound fairly familiar to other mobile payment platforms. Retailers pay per month for cards, marketing materials, and customer data software. Consumers can use one of the provided cards or the smartphone app (available for Android and iPhone) to scan their participation per visit and point of sale. You can also use the Belly-provided iPad as well. This, of course, leads to loyalty rewards.
Belly offers a free trial as well, so getting up and running seems relatively pain free for interested merchants. And it’s unequivocally easy for consumers as the smartphone app will tell you the participating stores in your area. It’s a welcome alternative for users who appreciate the benefits of Foursquare and like-minded apps but get lost in all the other platforms these check-in services try to tie themselves to.
We’d expect some resistance on the retailer end. This sector has grown incredibly disenchanted with anything even resembling a daily deal service, so Belly might have something of an uphill battle initially. But apparently it’s been growing quickly: according to company's press release, “In just 12 weeks since its pilot launch, Belly has already racked up more than 18,000 users and 50,000 check-ins. Many stores are seeing more Belly check-ins than all other check-in services combined.”
Also a positive indicator of Belly's potential is a recent, generous investment from Lightbank (a venture firm from former Groupon executives). In all the local-meets-e-commerce-meets-social chaos from the past few years, it’s difficult to pick out a sustainable model that benefits buyers and sellers equally. Belly could be a step in the right direction. 

Read more
How American Express is doing e-commerce right
amexfoursquare

The power of social media remains unrealized. Even Facebook is learning by trial and error, experimenting with this new medium while we simultaneously consume it. And because the industry remains constantly in-flux, the missteps are various and many.
But a surprising contender is leveraging social platforms to its advantage. American Express has made a thorough and multi-faceted go at social this holiday season, using a handful of networks to fuel its focus on e-commerce.
Some brands are natural fits for social applications—generally, consumer product manufacturers like Target, Vitamin Water, Pepsi, and Old Spice easily fit the social media mold. While it might not fit in this category, American Express is getting ample help from the e-commerce surge this holiday shopping season. Formerly small startups like Groupon and Foursquare have been pioneering the evolution of how we buy things using social media, so it’s only natural that a company with the background and resources that Amex has would want a piece. Here are a few ways the company is cleverly exploiting social shopping trends.
The stamp card
The idea of a virtual stamp card isn’t novel. Everyone wants to be rewarded for their loyalty, a scheme various deal and location sites have capitalized on—and now, Amex. The company is partnering with Seamless, a New York-based startup that specializes in ordering takeout and delivery online. For every four orders of at least $15 you make using Seamless, Amex credits you $10. And this isn't the first time Amex has shown interest in digital commerce startups: the company will be heavily investing in this market. 
The fine print: The deal runs through October 31, 2012 and you can only get a max of $120 credited to your card. Eligible cards include Blue from American Express, Blue Cash, Blue Cash Everyday, Blue Cash Preferred, Blue Sky, or Blue Sky Preferred Card from American Express.
 
The grab bag
There’s something to be said for the element of surprise: as humans, we’re suckers for it. Enter Amex’s Gift Chain, a newly-launched program where members will get a surprise gift for spending $25 at participating online retailers. The catch, that you have no idea what you’re getting, is obvious. But possibilities include a year membership to ShopRunner, a $200 Amex e-gift card, or $100 in Nike gift cards. Or it could be the $5 Godiva gift card. Still, it’s an effective campaign since consumers are scouring online sales, and the extra incentive will likely end quite a few to the participating retailers’ sites.
The fine print: You have to sign up using an eligible Amex card (Macy's, Bloomingdale's, corporate, and prepaid Cards including American Express Gift Cards and SERVE Cards are not eligible), and you have to have been a member before November 27 of this year. You have to spend online using the card sometime between November 28 and December 21. Also, there’s a “while supplies last” clause attached.
 
Going local
Amex was a major sponsor of Small Business Saturday this year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving where consumers are encouraged to shop locally. Of course, the company attached its name to the day not only to get a little recognition for promoting small vendors. Amex teamed up with Foursquare (the two announced a partnership this past summer) to offer $25 for spending $25 or more at participating retailers. That isn’t where the integration ends, however: the company announced recently that card members can still sync their Amex to Foursquare for special offers and to get $10 back for spending $10.
The fine print: Again, the $10 for $10 is available at participating outlets. Prepaid cards and corporate cards are not eligible, either. 

Read more
Daily deal predictions for 2012: Who’s in, who’s out, and what discounts to expect
daily deals

The daily deal market is at a crossroads. In one corner, its advocates claim there’s new life to be squeezed out of the already over-saturated industry. In the other, detractors are screaming from the rooftops that Groupon’s controversial IPO process has been proof enough that the market is flawed and has reached its tipping point.
It’s been a tumultuous year, with predictions of collapse one day and promising statistics the next. And while the debate rages on, stand-alone sites as well as established platforms continue to jump into the fray, launching their own discount-a-day applications. So where is the industry heading in 2012?
Teaming up 
According to Tippr CEO Martin Tobias, the market will be rife with new deals and contracts, the biggest of them being a LivingSocial sale. “Going public would be hard for them because of just looking at what happened to Groupon, and investors are going to want their money back,” he says. “LivingSocial is having the same cash problem that Groupon has.”
A now-infamous problem: Groupon owed $230 million more than it had to its name when the company filed to go public earlier this year, and some iffy accounting metrics seemed to try to hide that fact. “They would have gone bankrupt at the end of the month if they hadn’t gone public,” Tobias says.
And it’s because of all this that LivingSocial will instead put itself up for sale. A likely buyer is Amazon, which already own a considerable stake in the company. But others are on the ballot as well, including the likes of Yahoo, Microsoft, and eBay. “Somebody with a large audience already,” says Tobias, “that adding this business to makes sense.”
It’s a smart move for these bigger companies, who can use LivingSocial’s man power to do the daily deals work for it. And according to recent Yipit data, Amazon’s already doing this: “Amazon, which invested $175 million in LivingSocial last December, continues to leverage LivingSocial’s sales force to sell its deals to merchants rather than investing heavily in its own sales force.”
There will also be plenty of efforts by smaller outlets to hook their fate to successful social sites (i.e., ScoutMob’s recent partnership with Foursquare). Containing the user experience within one app or site is better for the consumer, who doesn’t want to switch between applications to fully utilize everything that’s being offered.
Who’s out
To be brief, there’s one clear loser will emerge in 2012: The Groupon clone--something we've seen coming for awhile. Now to be clear, we need to define what that is exactly. A Groupon clone is a stand-alone site that isn’t affiliated with any larger company, that creates its own deals and b2b relationships and finds its own audience. It’s not Google Offers or Amazon Local, for instance.
These sites followed in Groupon’s and LivingSocial’s footsteps, watching the trend take a hold of the e-commerce scene. Unfortunately in this case, the first to the game may have sucked the niche dry before new competitors could even have a chance, and now they will experience the struggles but without the market share and investor relations to fall back on.
“If you’re already established, you don’t have to spend as much building this up,” says Tobias. “Groupon is stumbling and anyone new who wants to compete with it will similarly struggle.” Building a brand from the ground up isn’t easy, and those who are trying to do this on their own have missed the window.  
“I don’t think any of them have a chance,” Tobias says about these clones. “In the last six months 170 of them have gone bankrupt or closed and at the same time 120 of them have been launched.”
Who’s in
But there is hope: “The model isn’t screwed. The direct model is screwed,” he says. Sites that are adding daily deals to their already established platforms have a much better shot at success in this market—sites like Google Offers, Amazon Local, MSN Offers and the like.
Google Offers has had a relatively quiet introduction, although new data from Yipit shows it’s growing steadily. According to the same report, Amazon Local has recently experienced a surge in its expansion. These types, Tobias says, will play out in the long run because they are just part of an entire package of solutions for retailers.
Which brings us to what remains a large hurdle: merchant trust. Many local business owners have sworn off the scheme and the sleazy tales of vendors duped into terrible money-losing deals are never-ending. 
It’s been said time and time again that Groupon is in direct competition with the vendors who use it for customer loyalty, and often the consumers attracted to the site in the first place are motivated by saving money. But building this business around a site that people visit for a variety of reasons—to read, to chat, to email—could mean a very different type of e-commerce experience altogether. And Jerry Nettuno, CEO of small business solutions application Schedulicity says that the market still has room for improvement, and that this will play out next year: "Random go-for-broke deals will evolve into well-thought-out offers." So expect to see this evolution over the next year--from oulets that can manage to promote this kind of thing, which are likely to be big players and not fringe sites. 
2012 Deals: Travel and experience
The Yipit report shows that “spa and beauty” and “restaurant” offers continued to be incredibly popular, both in bookings and percentage of deals on the table. But there are a few emerging trends we’re likely to see in 2012. Groupon’s Getaways have been a solid performer, and a huge sell for the site.
Likewise, LivingSocial Escapes have taken off. “LivingSocial Escapes, LivingSocial’s travel product, experienced a 94-percent growth in gross billings in October after the number of deals increased 64-percent and vouchers sold per deal jumped 40-percent.” LivingSocial Adventures has also done well for the company, so it would stand to reason that experiences and travel could become increasingly important for the daily discount industry. 

Read more