How to Add Places on Foursquare

Posted: 08 Sep 2010 03:00 AM PDT

Visit the actual post: How to Add Places on Foursquare

I have started using Foursquare sometime three months ago and I got hooked. Since the first day, I have signed up with this site I had been happily "checking-in" to many different places here in my hometown, Baguio City.

Foursquare is a social networking site that lets a user post where he or she is located. As of writing this post, it can do cross-posting via Twitter and Facebook; Twitter shows the link to the details of the Foursquare venue while Facebook posts an accompanying map.

I think Foursquare would have been more awesome if its users are able to place comment on other people’s statuses within their website.

image credit to Vadim Lavrusik

How to Add Places on Foursquare

Make sure that the place is not yet listed in Foursquare. Do a search first. (insert image of the search results, desktop and mobile)
Search place - mobile version

Search place first -desktop version
Type in the venue details. Foursquare will show the confirmation message that the venue was added successfully.
Add new venue - on mobile

Add new venue - on desktop
Don't forget to check-in using a mobile phone after adding the new place. Foursquare did NOT include a similar means of checking in the desktop version of their website. But because I carry a mobile phone with SMS and call only capabilities, I simply use the desktop to get to the mobile page just by typing www.foursquare.com/mobile
Checking-in - appears only on mobile

It was different in the case of my friend, who happened to be working in Majuro, Marshall Islands. Doing the above steps should have been easy, but an error that said “Sorry we can’t find the location on a map. Can you double check the address and try again?” appeared when adding new places. I figured out that Marshall Islands, including the capital Majuro, doesn’t have much labeled structures compared to the Philippines, so I suggested that he add those new places first via Google Maps before doing the steps above. We did that and it worked!

I browsed through Foursquare’s help pages and didn’t mention anything on what to do when this kind of error comes up.

error encountered when adding venue - desktop version

How to add places on Google Maps

NOTE: It’s best to work on Google Maps using a desktop and broadband internet connection.

Go to Google Map Maker then type in the name of the place to edit. After the map has been loaded, click Edit to load the Google Map Maker, which allows adding and editing of places. To be able to edit the place, login using Google Account. The sign-in link is located at the upper right side of the browser. Register a Google Account if you still do not have one.
editing the Google map
Google Map Maker is straightforward. There are only five visible controls to put mark roads and put places and the point, line and shape controls allow people to classify places. Use these controls to mark the place.
labeling the road and marking structures
Go back to Foursquare then try adding the new venue using the previous steps. Again, don't forget to "check-in" to that place.In my experience, even if the place was added and was NOT yet approved by a moderator, I was able to add the new place in Foursquare successfully.

There is no need to repeat all the steps in adding places for future Foursquare "check-ins".

NOTE: Thanks to Zorlone for providing camera shots of how the site looks like on his mobile phone.

Visits

Online

Partners

Blog Archive