Will Foursquare Miss a Major Opportunity with Volunteers?
Last week, the location based social network, Foursquare, released its new Explore feature. The new feature centers around recommendations technology to help people answer the question, “what should I do?”
The recommendations engine carries some exciting possibility, and may even help break the flat-lining usage of location-based services. The app will mine your check-in history to glean information about your preferences, and locate ‘expertise’ within your friend list to help you discover new places, food, and activities you may enjoy.
As you can see from the category list though, there is one omission that should have been obvious: volunteering.
I’d love to see Foursquare help people discover great places to volunteer in their community. This would not only increase volunteerism, but would help drive innovation in the nonprofit sector, the same way that food critics and Yelp reviews drive improvements in the restaurant industry.
80 million Americans volunteer every year at roughly 2 million nonprofits. I hope Foursquare will not miss a major opportunity to enhance the activity that so many find so rewarding.
