Nicoel Mitchell-Duff is the mayor of 32 places in Edmonton — on Foursquare, that is.
The location-based social networking game lets users connect with friends and “check in” their downtown whereabouts. Frequent a venue enough, and becoming the mayor of that location is within reach: That’s how she became mayor of the Starbucks in her Central McDougall neighbourhood.
While the thought of making your daily GPS-pinpointed travels fodder for yet another status update feed sounds too much of an overshare, it’s worth noting that Foursquare — with 300,000 users worldwide — is fast becoming what many are predicting as the next Twitter.
Mitchell-Duff — who works in experiential marketing and also uses Twitter and Tumblr — uses Foursquare as a crowd-sourced city guide. It’s how she found out about the recent re-opening of the Art Gallery of Alberta and a ton of new brunch spots: “It’s definitely given me an opportunity, or rather a reason, to explore my neighbourhood and (find) new things to do.”
Which is why Mitchell-Duff added a new Foursquare friend — Metro Canada. The partnership has spurred much attention, as it’s the first news outlet the one-year-old platform has partnered with.
What’s it like to be friends with Metro? During a weekend shopping trip at the West Edmonton Mall, Mitchell-Duff got a Metro “tip” on her iPhone to venture into the food court and try a vermicelli bowl at the Urban Foodie-approved Hoang Long Noodle House.
There’s also the Metro “badge” that she recently unlocked, an in-game status symbol that marks you an advanced Foursquarer. (Mitchell-Duff is second on Edmonton’s top 100 Foursquare leaderboard.) Local Mayor deals announced every Friday in the paper finally provides discounts for those frequent check ins.
Eventually, predicts Robyn Payne, Metro Canada’s marketing and research manager, the Urban Foodie tips will include geotargeted news to provide further context to downtown exploration.
“We want to tie local news and facts into locations,” she says.
While Mitchell-Duff’s quick to note a few kinks — she wishes there were more downtown tips, and tips were filtered by the city users are in — she’s hoping that the newspaper at the very least gets more players in town and making mayorship more competitive.
“I’m kind of itching to organize an Edmonton Foursquare meet-up.”
– Rea McNamara writes about the on/offline statuses of niches and subcultures. Follow her on Twitter @reeraw
Correction – February 8, 2010, 1:15 p.m. EST: A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Nicoel Mitchell-Duff’s name. It has since been corrected.
