Foursquare Map for Leidse Square ‘Entertainment Area’ in Effect

Finally got around to go the AUB Ticketshop at Leidse Square during the daytime to view the Foursquare Display we setup in action (previous blog post).

A video of the screen:

The screen in context:

It is a welcome refresher from the static posters and the static videos that usually litter these high profile locations. The foursquare coloured view of the area is always fresh and shows a view on the local flavour and the people that visit the venues around.

From an urban development point of view it may be odd to draw more attention to the already highly crowded Leidse Square area. But it comes to reason that new developments such as these will be tested on high density locations first. We would be very interested to create augmentations in public space to make locations in Amsterdam’s periphery more appealing.

10’000’000 Foursquare Users

Somebody brought to my attention again the Foursquare user adoption animation they created in honour of their 10 millionth member. A great achievement for Foursquare and just the beginning of many more awesome things I am sure.

In the animation, if you look at the still at August of 2009, you see the US gaining some traction and this flare across the pond. That is Amsterdam where at the time Foursquare was being adopted hand over fist.

The story behind that is somewhat interesting and has been told, but this graphic does make it poignant again. Having visited SxSWi that last March, Robert Gaal and myself saw the launch of Foursquare and quickly got hooked. That was the year that location had not been played out yet at all, Latitude was fresh, Fire Eagle was still relevant and Brightkite was being used. Location was on the cusp.

Back in the Netherlands we quickly got in touch with the guys to get the service launched here. We thought waiting would probably result in the Netherlands being served last (as usual). After some back and forth we got everything up and running and Amsterdam was the first international city on Foursquare. The rest is history as can be seen in the graph.

Foursquare map display for Amsterdam nightlife

For the Amsterdam UIT Bureau and I Amsterdam we created this Foursquare map designed to display nightlife activity around the Leidseplein (entertainment) area with recent checkins, specials and current mayor and photographs of a selected group of venues. We strongly believe in creating autonomous displays that take cues from the environment —in this case using Foursquare— and deliver clear actions to the audience as well as a sense that the area they are in is alive and all they have to do is go out and connect to it.

The project is live at its own URL and in an iframe on the IAmsterdam site.

Technically we used Foursquare’s OAuth2 API which is outstanding. To be able to share one token across all requests we employ a file based PHP cache that relays the necessary requests for us. Main technology was created in collaboration with Panman Productions.

Foursquare Page for Utrechts Uitburo

The Utrechts Uitburo —the cultural promotion and scheduling agency of the city of Utrecht— has received the first Dutch brand page on Foursquare via our mediation (tweet). Further integration and content enrichment is forthcoming.

The news has been picked up by Emerce and Dutchcowboys among other publications.