Treat Yo Self!

Updated below with a response from list founder Alisha M.

Foursquare, the social-networking app that allows you to "check in" to venues, become a mayor, meet up with your friends, and find out which Starbucks locations have been masturbated in, now has a new crowd-sourcing function. In the words of Parks and Recreation's Tom Haverford, it's time to "Treat Yo Self!"

In the recent episode "Pawnee Rangers" Tom (played by Aziz Ansari) explains that "Treat Yo Self" is an annual tradition where he and former coworkers Donna go to the mall and...well...treat themselves. Treating yo self can apply to buying anything from a massage, mimosas, fine-leather goods, to a fully-functioning  Batman costume.

Yesterday, a FourSquare user named Alisha M. started a New York list called "Treat Yo Self," naming NYC's best spots to get pampered. New York's "Treat Yo Self" list quickly went viral on sites like Buzzfeed, leading some to speculate that it was part of a Foursquare marketing tie-in with NBC. (Foursquare has frequently collaborated with outside corporations and networks, including Bravo, The History Channel, The Wall Street Journal, and Pepsi to name a few.) However, when The New York Observer asked co-founder Dennis Crowley if this comedy spin-off was part of a promotion, he responded via email: "ha, random user generated content i believe :)"

It's the smiley face emoticon that sold us. Still, Alisha M. may not be just a "random user." She describes herself on Twitter as a "social biz consultant & event schmoozer." Her resume lists her current profession as a freelance writer and social business consultant:

I assist travel networks, start-up companies, social enterprises, and small businesses on content marketing and audience development through marketing outreach, leading events, business development and social media. My strengths here are being an insightful writer, leading marketing and tech research, running community outreach, and providing insight on PR tactics.

So is Treat Yo Self's FourSquare just a clever crossover hit, or a clever viral marketing stunt?

Update: Just a crossover hit! Alisha responded to us via e-mail (and in the comments):

It was a silly idea I had the other night after having a nice dinner at Tea and Sympathy to create a list of places I go to when I want to splurge. And, being a huge fan of Parks and Rec, I wanted to dub it TREAT YO SELF. I have no affiliation with the show, it's simply my own homage to the show and of course the city I love.

So just genuine show-love and pampering tips! Go on everyone, treat yo self to one of Alisha's tips:

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We can't all be da mayor.

Ahhh lurkers, where would the internet be without them. While Foursquare has growing steadily, adding around one million users every month and half during 2011, co-founder Dennis Crowley say that to truly hit scale, Foursquare needs to find a way to offer value to users who don’t check in.

Speaking at the 92nd street Y for the #140 conference this week, Crowley pointed out that Twitter, five percent of users account for 75 percent of the activity. In fact, according to research from Sysmos, 21 percent have never written a tweet and 85 percent update less than once per day.

A lot of those users, however, are on Twitter to follow their favorite celebrities or friends. Some are keeping track of a particular hashtag to keep up with news events like the #arabspring or  #weinergate.

On Foursquare, it would be a little strange (you stalker) to follow people without participating.The service is less of a platform for public figures and more of a social network for friends to keep tabs on one another.

But with the introduction of the explore feature, Foursquare is positioning itself as a city guide as well. So it would make sense for a user to join, follow a few friends who are active users that share similar tastes, and use the recommendations generated from that activity. ”As with any social service, you have a core of active people doing things like sharing or checking in, and others who are more commenters or consumers,” says co-founder Naveen Selvadurai. “Having all types of people in our community makes for a better experience for everyone.”

Foursquare might also consider partnering with taste makers to who could be followed by users particularly interested in good coffee, bookstores or public parks. This would be something akin to the list model created by Dinevore. Users might also be able to follow brands which could offer specials, adding economic value to these infrequent check in types.

“A lot of people will look through foursquare Tips when they arrive at a place; it’s a good source of suggestions and insider info, from friends, celebrities, and the foursquare community,” says Selvadurai.

As Foursquare looks to close a big round of funding this summer, focusing on a way to attract and engage casual users seems like a smart priority. “We look at how people use foursquare, and try and increase the value they get out of it. That’s why we created comments (tons of people were texting friends they saw checking in), and Tips (people want to share their expertise). A big part of the foursquare experience has value even if you’re not checking in, because there’s a ton of knowledge that is shared within the community,” says Selvadurai. “In the future, we’re going to find more ways to share more of that, whether it’s more personalized recommendations or better social sharing tools. We’re just at the start of what we hope to be able to do.”

The company released this amazing infographic to share some of the highlights. 

There were 381,576,305 check-ins all told, with the biggest single event being the 30,525 checkins at the Rally To Restore Sanity in D.C.

Perhaps most impressive was the range of locations that earned top honors. Japan, Australia and Thailand all had some of the top locations for Foursquare check-ins. 

As we noted earlier this morning, Foursquare's value is now north of $250 million and it plans to double its staff in the coming year. 

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

Foursquare's Dennis Crowley does. The New York entrepreneur who is now on what's arguably the cutting edge of social media--location-based services--repeatedly referenced the social network O.G. in an interview with GigaOM about Foursquare's strategy for making location social.

"In the past, I would spend all this time on my Friendster profile finding people and sharing the profile, and at the end of the day, it was close the lid on your laptop and that was it. It didn't do anything," Crowley said.

Crowley's Friendster profile still lists him at Dodgeball, the Foursquare-precurser he sold to Google in 2005. He has 151 friends.

"There was no language even to describe what we were doing," Crowley says of the location-based services he was building in 2001. "This was before social networks. Much later, we described it as, 'Friendster on your cell phone.'"

It's interesting to hear Crowley mention a company so many iterations back in the history of social networking. But it's probably smart for the founder to keep one eye on the past. History repeats itself, after all.

Friendster turned down a $30 million acquisition offer from Google in 2003. Two years later, the company was broke.

Foursquare turned down several $100 million-plus offers from Yahoo, according to Kara Swisher at All Things D, as well as a more recent acquisition offer, speculated to be around $140 million, from a major company like Facebook.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

According to founder Dennis Crowley, users are already uploading close to one photo every second, and that's not even counting the Android users who will start taking photos today.

As Mark Zuckerberg has discussed, and as the success of apps like Instagram and PicPlz have demonstrated, photos are really the killer app when it comes to social on the web. 

The big question is how Foursquare will deal with this surge in data intensive activity by its users. The site had an major outage back in October, which Crowley attributed to "too many check ins". 

For the next year at least, Foursquare plans to stay focused on growth, not profit. These new features should supercharge user adoption, and hopefully the site can stay one step ahead of this growth and avoid lengthy downtime. 

UPDATE: Dens replies to our concerns about the traffic spike from photos and comments - 

Check Out The Brooklyn Super Nerds Who Accidently Invited All Of Foursquare To Their NYE Party >>

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

(flickr.com/pahudson)

TechCrunch reported today that Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley admitted the company once had an offer for "in the ballpark" of $140 million. Crowley later walked it back--but if true, the offer would have been more than 100 times the $1.35 million in seed funding Foursquare had raised at the time.

Other tidbits about Foursquare that filtered out of the Le Web conference in Paris today:

• the company is about to hit 40 employees
• is signing up 25,000 new users a day
• 60% of users are in the U.S.
• Crowley hopped a turnstile in the Paris metro

The company's long-term prospects are the subject of intense speculation. But Foursquare continues to fascinate The Observer, which in the last week covered Foursquare's new TV show, Foursquare's plans for profitability in 2012, and Foursquare stripping its mayors of their powers.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

But at the D:Dive Into Mobile conference today, co-founder Dennis Crowley said Foursquare isn't focused on revenue yet, or on new investment for that matter.

"We're not raising money, though people have approached us. We have enough money to go through till the end of next year," he said, adding, "The point is not to become profitable now, but to grow."

Foursquare has been ramping up it's offerings from local merchants. Crowley recently told Fox Business News that he sees the company as the 21st century version of the "loyalty card," by which customers can earn rewards.

"Our business model is to create and sell tools to local merchants. When we figure out what is actually working on the local merchant front, then we'll pull that lever."

Foursquare now seems to have two key goals: On the one hand, it's planning to release a new app and focus on growing its user base. At the same time, its business model seems to center on serving local merchants. It will be interesting to see how Crowley & Co. intregrate these two aspects of the company.

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

Unfortunately, it's not speeding up either. It took a year for the company to reach one million users; three months to hit 2 million and a month and a half to hit 3 million.

Since then, however, it has added 1 million every 1.5 months, so user growth seems to have leveled off.

When Facebook debuted its Places platform, many in the tech press, The Observer included, speculated about what it might mean for Foursquare.

But the last quarter of 2010 has been great for Foursquare. It locked down major partnerships with big brands like Gap and Radioshack, added an office in Cali and brought on new hires in NYC.

Founder Dennis Crowley just tweeted that his company is working on a hot new Foursquare app. Now they just have to worry about alienating those core users...

UPDATE: Foursquare's Erin Gleason writes to say, "Although we're over 5 million in terms of user IDs, we haven't quite hit 5 million users yet. We should hit 5 million sometime next week." Devils in the details.

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

Founder Dennis Crowley appeared on the show today for an interview, and the fine folks at Fox asked him the hard questions about internet business.

Highlights include one Fox anchor choking on the question of "generating revenue" and the other wondering if Foursquare might risk alienating its core users by going too commericial. 

Hello! Crowley just modeled for a hunky Gap ad and is taking the time out for Fox News. Could their embrace of the mainstream be any clearer? Maybe Crowley can make this simpler. 

"I think it's a new version of the loyalty card that we're building. You ever go into a sandwich shop, for every ten times you come in you get a free sandwich. We're doing that for all businesses."

Ahhh, the marvels of geo-location boiled down to a free ham and cheese. Still, gotta love @dens blowing up Black Friday. 

Doesn't seem like Fox offers an embed code for their video, but you can check the interview out here.