Time Out New York has recently integrated with social geo-location platform Foursquare, featuring a new online scoreboard that ranks users – in realtime – by the number of tips they complete at NYC locations on Time Out’s “Best of NYC” list. The launch of this integration coincides with the release of Time Out’s annual “Best of New York” issue.
The details:
- Time Out New York created a “tip list” on the company’s Foursquare page with the top 50 recommended New York activities
- users can check in to venues on the tip list
- Foursquare users with 3 check-ins at venues on the “Best of NYC 2011″ list will unlock a custom “King of New York” badge
- users that mark a tip at any “Best of NYC 2011” venue as done get points on the leaderboard
- each week, the top 3 scorers from the leaderboard (if their Foursquare account is linked to Twitter) will be featured in Time Out’s print magazine
Janet Caputo, Time Out New York’s social-media director, told AdAge “I think this campaign is a great example of how we’re bridging the gap between social, digital and print.”
Other media properties that have integrated with Foursquare include The Wall Street Journal, in order to create “heat maps” showing the density of check-ins in New York and San Francisco at hourly intervals, and Showtime network, to promote the new series “The Franchise.”
Foursquare has also added a new feature, Radar (accessible with the iPhone iOS 5 update), which tells Foursquare users when they’re near venues on a “tip list” that they follow, or venues on their own “to-do” list. According to the Foursquare blog, “it finds things nearby that you normally wouldn’t know about.”
How will the geo-social element raise engagement for Time Out New York? We’re excited to see the results…and maybe a little excited for that “King of New York” badge!
