Foursquare Teams With Bravo TV
Bravo TV and Foursquare will announce a new partnership on Monday that will integrate Bravo TV shows with the game aspects of Foursquare, a social networking site that encourages people to interact in the real world. The partnership hopes to engage viewers long …
Context & Ripple Effects
Foursquare enters this partnership on a fast ramp: a $1.35 million seed round led by Union Square Ventures closed in September 2009, the service dropped its restricted-city list in early January 2010 to go nationwide, and a FoursquareX desktop client shipped mid-January to reach users beyond phones. Its check-in rewards mechanic has been positioned since launch as a twist on Facebook that anchors a new wave of location-based social networks.
The Bravo deal is the first move to plug that mechanic into television: rather than competing for viewers' attention against the screen, Bravo plans to integrate its shows with the game layer so checking in becomes part of watching. For a startup still proving its consumer reach, a national cable brand is both distribution and validation.
First-order effects
- Bravo gains a second-screen engagement loop — viewers who check in while watching its shows generate location data and game activity tied to specific programming.
- Foursquare gets exposure to a mass TV audience well outside its early-adopter mobile base, addressing the growth-without-scale problem noted when usage was still mostly phone-bound.
Second-order effects
- Other networks and show producers face pressure to add their own check-in integrations, turning location-based gaming into a standard TV marketing line item rather than a novelty.
- Rival location services must answer with their own media-brand deals or risk ceding the entertainment vertical that gives check-ins cultural visibility.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, broadcast content and real-world venues converge into one measurable audience — check-ins becoming an ad currency networks can sell against, and location startups competing on partnerships as much as product.
The trend: Television networks are adopting location-based check-in games to extend programming beyond the broadcast window, making startups like Foursquare part of the media-marketing stack.