Businesses are becoming increasingly interested in using location-based check-in services like Foursquare to encourage people to come to their stores. But those networks still have a relatively limited reach, and the majority of patrons haven’t heard of them. PlaceWidget offers a potential way to help with that.
The simple service uses the Foursquare API to allow any venues to embed a widget on their website. This widget, which prominently features the Foursquare logo shows the venue name, its address and phone number, and the number of people checked in. This is a good way to spread the word about Foursquare if businesses want to start using it more to offer up special deals to customers, and to entice them to come back.
And the widget also offers the venue a way to give thanks to its best customers. Below the standard data, the widget shows the Foursquare mayor of the venue, along with their picture. For those unaware, a “mayor” is the Foursquare user who checks-in to the venue the most amount of times. The widget also shows how many mayor preceded the current mayor.
Finally, the widget also shows the Tips for that venue that Foursquare users leave about what to try, buy, or do at that particular place.
Creator Brad Kellett says that Foursquare co-founder Naveeen Selvadurai gave him the idea on the Foursquare dev mailing list. It’s a solid one that both venues and Foursquare should love. And creating a widget is three simple steps. Once you do that, you’ll get a snippet of JavaScript to embed in your site and you’re good to go. Kellett also says that a WordPress plug-in is coming shortly to make it even easier to create and customize these widgets.