Busy week here at 4SQ HQ!

foursquare:

Have you seen this video?  It’s from a subway station in Stockholm, Sweden where some designers were trying to create an incentive for people to skip the escalator and take the stairs.  Their solution was to turn the steps into a piano where each step would play a different musical note - basically creating a way to make the taking the stairs more fun than taking the escalator.  And it worked.

I feel like this is also what we’re trying to do at foursquare - how do you make exploring cities / meeting up with friends / discovering new places more fun?

Last week we announced a partnership with San Francisco’s BART (the mass transit system) that let’s foursquare users earn badges for riding public transportation, unlock tips about the interesting coffee shops, music stores, etc you can find near BART stations and even win free train tickets on BART trains for checking-in.

… and just like the piano steps that make taking the stairs more fun than taking the escalator, we’re trying to make taking public transport more fun than being stuck in highway traffic.  :)

We’re loving this and hopes it foreshadows the types of things we’re thinking about and the types of experiences we’re planning on creating.

Official press release from BART: http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20091022.aspx