I love the new version of the Swarm app from our portfolio company Foursquare so much that I fired off a tweetstorm about it earlier this week.
Among the many great replies I got was this one:
@fredwilson do we still care about “mayorships?”
— Jordan Rice (@1jrice) August 26, 2015
To which I replied:
@1jrice i sure do. been trying like hell to snag the mayorship of my favorite coffee shop for the past two weeks. it’s fun. — Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) August 26, 2015
I know gamification has been overdone and many are tired of it. But there is something about playing the mayorship game that never gets old for me.
Just today I checked in at my favorite coffee shop in Amagansett and got this notification:
Somehow Brian slipped in and grabbed that mayorship away from me a few weeks ago and I’m trying like hell to get it back. That drives business for Jack and brings a little more fun and playfulness to my life each day.
And its not just Jack’s where I’m on the cusp. Here are all the places I’m close.
That’s a list of places I’m likely to go to as I make my plans each day.
When Foursquare separated the core Foursquare app into two apps, Foursquare for venue search, recommendations, and tips, and Swarm for the social checkin and game play, they left mayorships and the leaderboard out of Swarm. That was a big mistake. It’s back and better than ever and I’m loving it.
