Watch out Stephanie Miner: The number of mayors in Syracuse is growing.

Foursquare, a location-based service launched in March 2009, allows smartphone users to ‘check in’ at their current locations. Users can locate friends, earn ‘badges’ based on those check-ins, and get tips and specials for some locations. The person with the most check-ins at a certain location within a 60-day period becomes the mayor of that destination. With pride in mind, users aspire for mayorship, primarily for bragging rights.

Syracuse University recently joined with Foursquare producers to make the application especially useful for SU students. In addition to the university being one of the first to develop a campus-exclusive website with Foursquare, there are new badges to collect for students using the service at SU. Local businesses are also getting involved in the application’s trend. Students can personalize their Syracuse experience through this mobile community and reap exclusive benefits.

The new connection will affect SU students in the near future. For this year’s Orange Central, the university’s annual Homecoming celebration, activities centered on Foursquare will be created, according to a press release. The university will also be offering training sessions for the application’s uses and advantages at another time.

David Rosen, a senior finance and information management technology major, reached out to Foursquare founder and SU alumnus Dennis Crowley after Rosen realized Harvard University had a brand page on the application while SU did not.

Rosen said he was insulted an SU alumnus neglected to create a Foursquare page for his alma mater.

‘I tweeted at him and he instantly responded, connecting with his head of business development, and it took off from there,’ Rosen said.

Rosen is currently helping SU manage its Foursquare presence as the application’s official campus representative.

Joshua Fishman, a junior marketing and entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises double major, also helped jump start Foursquare’s increased presence at SU. Fishman worked this past summer with a consumer products company to market the application on and off campus. Now, it is exciting for him to see the product from a student’s perspective, he said.

‘I love it on campus because I’m in the Whitman school, and I spend most of my day there,’ Fishman said. ‘I am the mayor of Whitman, so I might go there one night instead of the library to study.’

Foursquare membership is growing 1 percent every day and will soon be as commonly used as Facebook, Fishman said.

Local businesses have gradually been joining the Foursquare community, allowing both the customer and the business to learn more about the other.

A lot of large corporations are just beginning to integrate Foursquare into their business models but smaller, locally-owned businesses are further behind on the trend, Rosen said. He said he wants to help businesses join the application and claim their venues to offer special promotions to Foursquare users through connections. Businesses can obtain valuable statistics about their users upon joining.

Though many locally-owned businesses along Marshall Street do not offer specials through the application, locations like Manny’s and Varsity Pizza offer check-in opportunities.

‘I think if more people that owned the businesses knew about it, it would be really beneficial,’ said Noah Silverstein, a sophomore English and textual studies major.

While campus specials may be few in number, the tips are plentiful.

‘Much of the power of Foursquare is all about tips, bits of information that others have left at venues,’ Rosen said. ‘When someone is following SU on Foursquare, they will have our tips pushed to them when they check in near a venue we have chosen.’

Fishman found himself wanting to use this tip-seeking feature when ordering at Slider’s Burgers & Belgian Fries on Marshall Street for the first time.

‘I went there, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to eat,’ Fishman said. ‘If one of my friends left a tip, they could suggest something to order if one of my friends had eaten there before.’

Silverstein, a BlackBerry user, said he would use the service if it was more widely recognized throughout the university. ‘Right now, it is kind of an extraneous accessory on the Internet, kind of like Farmville,’ he said.

Jayme Brown, a sophomore writing major, does not have a smartphone, but thinks the application would be useful if all of her friends use it.

Said Brown: ‘Once I get a smartphone, I’m going to walk by the Flint stairs every day and check in.’

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Published on September 19, 2010 at 12:00 pm