THE DREAM IN ACTION

Foursquare’s first direct relationship of note was with the Brooklyn Museum. The museum saw the obvious value of visibility into who checked-in and decided to embrace the opportunity to directly provide it’s visitors with tips and tricks around the museum. The created an interactive experience and essentially a personally guided tour! Awesome. Other institutions saw the obvious value in this type of partnership and wanted in, as I said before, the people who get in early will benefit the most. Tristan is killing it in driving these partnerships and infusing compelling reasons for users to checkin and amplifying the value of the checkin.

Our next announcement was that Harvard University got on board by populating over 30 tips for both students and visitors all around campus. The cheeky headlines read, “Foursquare goes to school” and they were right. With Harvard U. on board Foursquare was learning that the potential for these partnerships were reDONKulous. Harvard used the Foursquare platform to populate a virtual tour guide with tips like…

@ Harvard Hall: In 1764, Harvard Hall burned down in a nor’easter, taking with it almost the entire College library & John Harvard’s book collection. (December 9, 2009)

@ Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage: An American landmark since 1960 & voted best burgers in America! Try “The American Idol” burger w/ bacon, cheese, mushrooms and onions. (December 8, 2009) [Link]

Can you imagine the potential of the worlds best location based social network and the worlds best restaurant guide teaming up? Exclusive tips from Zagat about the highest rated restaurants in major cities like Chicago, New York, and San Francisco becomes very interesting for the foodies out there. Did someone say Foursquare Foodie badge? I think so!

Oh snap, with a Foursquare/Bravo partnership 4SQ enters 90 million American living rooms and hits mainstream big timeness. BravoTV’s experts and celebs give tips about the venues they love so that when you check in, you’ll see their exclusive tips integrating your checkins with that of the BravoTV shows. Everything from Michael Cohen of Miami Social, to Patti Stranger from Millionaire Matchmaker…know you’ll be in the know like never before, and you can live vicariously through the shows and their stars.

@ Joe Allen: This is where the understated in-crowd always dines. You actually need reservations because the food and This is where the understated in-crowd always dines. The menu changes often but for lunch, the La Scala salad is so good!  Their fish selections are also notable. -Michael Cohen, Miami Social (1 day ago)

@ Dave and Buster’s – Hollywood: Sports bars attract hotties. That’s why I love the wings at Dave & Busters. -Patti Stanger, Millionaire Matchmaker (1 day ago)

The institutional partnerships are taking things to a whole new level. Foursquare was always praised for being a game that provided real world, offline value, but with these partnerships that value was just amplified.

I’ve recently been thinking proactively about what to do when a partnership going wrong. I’m not talking about a co-founder, or good friend I’m talking about a client partnership. You should already have a agreement/contract in writing, I won’t even dive into the importance of that. These are some thoughts for after the fact. Note: I’ve not had to use any of the below statements with partners, I’ve been lucky. So far.

1)
Call out their good nature…
“Dear client, we appreciate the work we’ve done together, but we noticed that you’ve not yet _________.  If you need any help on the matter, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.”

2)
Call out their integrity…
“Dear client, You have agreed to ________.  We signed the agreement in good faith and will honor our side.  If you think we need to modify the contract, we would be happy to discuss a modified deal. We understand you concern with _________, and would be willing to discuss a price that is fair for both parties.”

3)
Call out their sense of the law….
“Dear client, It is clear our signed contract requires you to ______. We think it is clear you are violating the terms of the agreement. Please let us know if you think the terms of the contract are unclear.”

4)
Add to the old agreement, don’t change it…
“Dear client,  since there has been no communication, we assume that you wish to renegotiate the original agreement.  Our price for the service we’ve provided is $1,000 per day, retroactive to the time we started working with Company X, plus $100/hr * 50hrs of time spent implementing our product with your service.”

5)
At last resort, you’ll have to use the legal system…
Call a lawyer. Hopefully you trust them, it could get real expensive.

Usually people aren’t trying to screw you and are more than willing to diplomatically work out the misunderstanding. Don’t embarrass or threaten before you have to or it could get ugly for no reason.