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foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so. We do this by combining our friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics - our users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favorites.

In the past few months we've seen local businesses encouraging users to show their phones to servers and cashiers as a way to prove their loyalty to a particular place.

"Foursquare says you've been here 10x? That's a free drink for you!"

"Foursquare has deemed you the mayor (aka you've been here more than any other user)? Enjoy this free order of french fries."

We've seen venues promote their involvement with foursquare via Twitter, signs at cash registers and sidewalk blackboards. We're just starting to make these specials "official" by including them in our mobile apps and on our website.

We'd be thrilled to have your bar / cafe / coffee shop / restaurant / store as part of our foursquare specials program. This can happen in a variety of ways, but essentially comes down to rewarding customer loyalty based on the data behind foursquare usage.

For example, foursquare can tell you how many times a customer has been to your venue or the frequency of their visits. Many venues are now using this data to reward their most loyal customers with freebies or discounts.

(and you'd be surprised how effective a little friendly competition - over mayorship, over free fries! - can be at driving people back to your venue)

In our iPhone and mobile_web app, we call attention to venues who offer special treatment to foursquares users. If a foursquare user is at your bar/restaurant, we'll tell them what they have to do to unlock a free snack or discounted drink. If they happen to be across the street or two blocks away from your venue, we'll let them know that your business gives special treatment to foursquare users and that they should swing by for a visit.

If this is something you are interested in, let us know and we'll be in touch. We'd be happy to walk you through what venues are experimenting with and what we find interesting. And in the future, we'll be offering participating venues tools that will lend insight to who's visting, how often, where they're coming from and where they're going next.

We'd be thrilled to have you on board. Sign up here or feel free to email us wth any questions.

And if you're skeptical, check out some of the folks that really see the opporunity in what we're doing:

Read more:

• Mashable: Foursquare: Why It May Be the Next Twitter
• Ad Age: Building an Army of Hyper-Local, Mobile-Connected Advocates
• Techcrunch: Foursquare Shows The Business Potential Of Location-Based Services
• Charlie O'Donnell: Why Yelp (...and Every Single Retail Establishment) Should Support Foursquare

Take a look at some of our official venue partners below (and click through to see the specials they're offering!)

Venues offering "mayor specials"