The second big difference-maker for Foursquare will be an i Phone application.
That’s why I noted that this service could be a surprise hit at SXSW if the app is approved in time.
By 2007, its founders became fed up with Google’s neglect of the service they had created and left the company with middle-fingers wagging.
Now, one of those founders, Dennis Crowley, is back with Foursquare.
That said, text messaging is still the preferred means to interact with the service.
If you’ve used Dodgeball in the past, you’ll know the syntax, but for Twitter users is may be a little complicated.
The app is currently waiting for approval, and that could happen “literally any minute,” Crowley tells me.
Of course, it has already been by Apple once, because it apparently contained something that Apple didn’t like. (As we all know by now, Apple can be pretty picky when it comes to App Store approvals.) A third difference involves the feature side of the service.
Let’s say I go somewhere in Austin next week and I want to see who else is at the same place.
While both Foursquare and Dodgeball are about checking in places, Foursquare adds a bit more of a social element by incorporating two features called “Top 12” and “To Do.” Basically, Top 12 allows each users to list their 12 favorite things to do at various places around their home city.
To Do allows users to save items from other users’ Top 12 lists to make sure they do them later.
With the moves Google is attempting to make in becoming more social — especially its recent emphasis on location-based social aspects with services like Latitude — it was never really clear why Google bought Dodgeball only to let it die.
You’d think it could have been a great centerpiece of Android, instead, it became yet another neglected Google acquisition.