Foursquare has launched its Tip Lists features today, attempting to capitalize on people’s unending desire to create lists about locations, like Top Five Coffee Shops in SF, etc etc. Up until now your Foursquare Tips have sort of roamed free on the app, without rhyme or reason or real incentive to add more. Today the company is trying to improve on the Tips experience and get users to fancy themselves local experts. After all, you must know something about some place in the city you live in right?
If you visit your Foursquare profile on the web today you will see an option to start making lists, and suggestions based on your already existent checkins (mine are “Top picks for Coffee Shops” and “Top picks for Bars” which reminds me that I should probably check into more art museums or libraries or something). Creating a list is relatively easy, as the entry field auto-populates with places. There is also a collaborative functionality, which lets people who you’re friends with edit a list.
Thus far you can only create a list on the Foursquare website, but the company plans on more functionality for the mobile app. Users who wish to check out the lists on mobile can view them from the To-Do list tab, and users can find out when friends are following the same lists through the Notifications Tray. The Tip Lists will also feed into Foursquare’s Explore functionality, which serves up recommendations for Food, Nightlife and Coffee based on your friends’ Checkins and Tips.
Essentially this is similar to what startups like Journly are doing, allowing users to become curators of their environs. Yelp also has a Lists function, which seems to be, like Foursquare’s, pretty difficult to search. (Please Foursquare let me search for public user lists like “Best places for discount Miu Miu in SF,” please.)
The most interesting part about Foursquare Lists is their potential if executed correctly; Obviously this is a huge marketing opportunity for brands. “With Lists, brands, businesses, celebrities, and other organizations can easily organize and share their expertise and insights with our millions of users,” says Jonathan Crowley, Foursquare’s director of business development. Foursquare partner Lucky Magazine already has its Favorite LA Home Stores, MTV has its Hot Music Video Locations and People Magazine has built one for Star-Gazing Spots! Yeah.
Related: Tristan Walker’s lists are awesome, especially this one about “Dream Sandwiches” and this one curated from the Quora answers to “What restaurants in the world have the best views?” I want to go to there.