Foursquare Upgrades from Grande to Venti

Despite heavy competition from sites like Gowalla and Yelp, Foursquare is quickly making a name for itself as the king of location-based social networking. And this new-found fame has led to a string of major partnerships with several big brands.

One of the earliest companies to try out Foursquare as a business option was Tasti D-Lite. The popular frozen dessert chain launched their TastiRewards program, which allows customers to couple their Tasti D-Lite reward cards with their Foursquare accounts to give them more reward points. If they check in from a Tasti D-Lite location, then they get points. These points can then be redeemed for free or discounted treats.

After the success of the Tasti D-Lite/Foursquare partnership, other companies took a serious look at location-based mobile service, especially those in the entertainment industry. In particular, the Bravo Network really took steps to increase fan interaction through Foursquare, allowing fans of the network to play along with their favorite shows. Foursquare users can earn badges by checking in from locations mentioned on the network and be eligible to win prizes.

Now it seems like another big-name brand has partnered up with the 1 year-old start-up. Starbucks plans to test out an experimental customer rewards program, and would eventually like to use Foursquare to give frequent customers with incentives ranging from coupons for free coffee to invitations to special events, although the specifics are still in the works. Starbucks also created a "Barista badge" that is given out after 5 checkins, complete with the iconic Starbucks coffee cup and logo.

What I'm looking forward to is seeing if Foursquare eventually expands the Barista badge to include all coffee shops (like they have for their Gym Rat badge, which is rewarded after 10 trips to any gym in a 30-day span), or if it will remain a Starbucks exclusive.

Even more importantly, partnering with huge companies like Starbucks and the Bravo Network may legitimize Foursquare as a viable business option, and will open the doors for further business developments with location-based mobile services.

Google’s Ultrahigh-speed Headache

A few weeks ago, I mentioned how Google was working to develop ultrahigh-speed Internet access in a few test communities, which they would then hopefully expand to the whole country. It was quite the pitch, and with the proposed 1-gigabit-per-second connection, it seemed attainable. But according to the Wall Street Journal, this huge undertaking has been hitting a few speedbumps.

While Google has had no trouble finding communities to be their 1-gigabit guinea pigs, the logistics involved to pull off the construction are a bit overwhelming. New fiber optic cables have to be put in place, which means roads will have to be torn up. It’s a massive infrastructure that is apparently proving to be more of an obstacle than Google originally had hoped.

And even if Google does get the infrastructure up and running, there is still the issue of what the super fast connection will actually be able to accomplish. There simply aren’t a lot of online services that require 1-Gb speed. And unfortuntely, it wouldn’t necessarily make all existing services faster, because online traffic can only travel as fast as the slowest link its path.

This means that until 1-Gb connection speed becomes more widespread, streaming a YouTube video on 1-Gb won’t be much faster than it would be on a 200-Mb connection.

But Google’s ultrahigh-speed ship hasn’t sunk quite yet. That’s because Cisco recently announced they are testing Cisco CRS-3, which is a routing system they say is so fast it will allow people to download every movie ever made in 5 minutes.

This is actually good news for Google, because it means more focus and attention will be placed on ultrahigh-speed Internet. This should increase the demand for connection speeds that fast, which in turn means more initiative will be taken to make ultra-high speed Internet a reality. However, until that happens, Google’s Internet innovation may continue to just be an ultrahigh-speed headache.