We hit a social media milestone (in our eyes, anyway) last night: the one-thousandth check-in on the location-based social networking service Foursquare.
Foursquare, for the non-geeks among you, is an application that lets you "check in" at places you go- bars, restaurants, retail stores, gas stations- and share it with your friends. You can earn virtual badges for your check-ins, like the Swarm Badge we earned last spring when 50 people were checked into the Sandbar at the same time.
So last night, I noticed that check-ins at the Sandbar were quickly approaching 1000. I wasn't sure if we'd reach that number last night, but sure enough, Erika checked in and became the one-thousandth check-in.
(To be clear, these are not unique check-ins; the number of different people who have checked in on Foursquare is 372. But that tells me that a) there's still a lot of different people who have checked in to a bar that holds 49 people, and b) we have a lot of loyal, repeat customers.)
I sent a quick tweet to Erika thanking her for checking and offering her a free t-shirt. She responded almost immediately and Dave hooked her up with a prize.
See, social media can pay off with free stuff. We also have a Foursquare special that gets you free jukebox tunes for checking in, and we're working on some other fun and creative things too.
