As we noted last week, Foursquare decided to experiment with a new feature for Super Bowl Sunday: Promoted Venues. Specifically, they created a “Super Bowl Sunday” worldwide venue that anyone could check-in to to let others know that they were watching the Super Bowl. So how did it go? Well, when it wasn’t crashing the network, really well!
Foursquare has a post today detailing the experiment. Apparently, there were over 200,000 check-ins on Super Bowl Sunday to this venue from all around the work. In fact, as we suspected, it became the most checked into venue ever — and it took just four hours for that feat to happen. Foursquare also says that it was the largest online check-in event of all time.
Foursquare says there were check-ins from all 50 states and 125 countries around the world. Humorously, that included 13 check-ins from the Vatican. This begs the question: does the Pope use Foursquare? If so, was he rooting for the Packers or Steelers?
Speaking of that, as part of the fun, Foursquare allowed people to add a comment as to whether they were rooting for the Packers or the Steelers, so they could get that team’s badge. As you can see in the chart above, the Green Bay fans dominated throughout the entire day. “At no minute during the game was Steeler Nation stronger,” Foursquare notes.
Good news aside, many people who tried to check-in to the special venue during the game had issues. And in fact, some couldn’t use Foursquare at all. The service acknowledges some hiccups at their end of their post:
We weren’t quite prepared for all the excitement (our sincere apologies to those of you who had trouble finding the location at first; our ‘trending’ server was a bit hampered by the overwhelming traffic), but thank you everyone for participating.
In other words, the Promoted Venue idea was even more successful than they anticipated. I smell business opportunity. And so do they, you can be sure.
Foursquare is a geographical location based social network that incorporates gaming elements. Users share their location with friends by “checking in” via a smartphone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can connect their Foursquare accounts to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which can update when a check in is registered. By checking in a certain number of times, or in different locations, users can collect virtual badges. In addition, users...
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