In 5 Years I Earned 132 Badges On Foursquare After 11,930 Checkins

My ode to Foursquare. A look back from the beginning from an average Superuser.

I am a Foursquare dork. I got hooked very early and it has become a playful joke among my friends regarding how addicted I am to the service. I embraced this label and made a flag to mount when I camp to let people know that "The Mayor is here." Although not worth a penny in the real world, I am sad to see badges go away. Each one has a story behind them, although not all of them are interesting.

This month Foursquare announced it was spinning off the check-in feature into a separate app called Swarm. For many people, this marked a milestone where the company was shedding its adolescent check in past and had its eyes firmly trained forward for the future. It's clear, at least to me, that it wants to go mono-a-mono with Yelp.

I for one will be a little sad and wistful towards this change. I signed up for Foursquare a month after it launched in 2009. I was among the first 11,000 to join the service that now counts over 45 million users. From what I understand, badges are going to be less important in this next chapter of the company. With that in mind, I can't help but think about the badges I've picked up over the years.

The Starters

Via foursquare.com

My first check in was on April 20th, 2009. The Newbie Badge was at a venue that I think was eventually merged and deleted. Back then, Foursquare was limited to cities. Each city had its own set of badges and at the time a citywide leader board that would reset at the end of the week. It displayed the top 100 users with the most points. For the first month or so, there was never enough people in the city to fill up all 100 of those slots. Points were only assigned for check-ins between 4 pm and 8 am. Daylight check-ins did not count towards your point total. I was at the top of the leader boards those first few weeks.

The first set of badges came quickly. The Adventure, Explorer, Superstar, Bender, Local, Overshare, and Superuser badge weren’t difficult to acquire if you kept up with checking in.

Via foursquare.com

The Crunked, Player Please, School Night, and Photogenic badge were probably the most tricky to acquire. The Douchebag badge, which I never managed to snag, was during that time one of the more difficult ones to acquire because of the selected requirements of the badge. Gym Rat badge was another one I did not get because I never actually found myself in a gym. (Probably because I was to busy trying to figure out how to get more points and badges.)

The Harder To Snag Badges

Via foursquare.com

Animal House, Ziggy’s Wagon, Jobs, 16 Candles, Campus Explorer, Shutterbug, Quad Squatter, Kicks, Back to School, and I’m on a Boat badge required some planning. These I earned by purposely going to places where I would pick them up. In a way, that was the original intention of Foursquare badges.

Via foursquare.com

SuperMayor was a nice achievement as I continued to hold down mayorships. At one time I believe I held down over 60 mayorships from bars, to restaurants, and even the Philadelphia Airport for a week. I knew Foursquare was growing when I could no longer maintain mayorships at elementary schools I substituted at or storage facilities I visited once a month. The Swarm Badge, which the newest app is a bit of a nod to, I got at a Phillies game. The Baggage Handler badge was acquired in a random pick up at an airport. The Century Club and Ten Hundred badges were nice milestones, although I had hoped they would add more badges of these types. One of the last regular badges I earned was a 9 to 5 badge when I started a new job in 2013.

The Yearly Special Badges

Via foursquare.com

For a bit, Foursquare also put out some nonreligious holiday badges on Halloween, New Years, Leap Year, the Super Bowl, Election Days, and 4SQDay. I was a bit disappointed when they stopped this tradition.

The Mother Load Of Expertise Badges

Via foursquare.com

I really enjoyed the evolution of some badges into expertise badges. This gave a really good impression of how many different places one had been. Some badges, such as Don’t Stop Believin’ and Vinyl, I barely achieved. Others like Fresh Brew and Mall Rat I maxed out. All in all whenever I earned these badges it was a pleasant surprise. I was hoping at one time, that almost every large category would have them. I never did see a theater related badge.

The Badge Brought To You By...

Via foursquare.com

Although the now look more like shields, I picked these sponsored badges up in my travels. Many of them were just me being in the right place at the right time.

A few I made an effort to track down. The Conan Blimp, Harry Potter, the VisitPA Badges were ones I actively hunted for.

The Hometown Badges

Via foursquare.com

Being from Philadelphia, the Philly Local and Phanatic badges were essential.

The Badges I'm Most Proud Of

Via foursquare.com

As silly as it sounds, there are 5 badges I’m most proud of. They all were earned on the same day, October 30th, 2010 in Washington DC. The Super Swarm, Super Duper Swarm, Epic Swarm, Rally to Restore Sanity, and March to Keep Fear Alive badges were all collected during Jon Stewart’s and Stephen Colbert’s rally. There were over 30,000 checkins that day and I was one of them.

With the release of Swarm, badges have been replaced with stickers. I'm not exactly impressed with stickers so far, but I'm willing to try it out for a few months to see what happens. Also gone are points, which I was also quite fond of. I believe I scored over 50 points in one checkin after I flew to Ireland for vacation with my girlfriend. I liked the gaming qualities of Foursquare. I hope over the months they start to reintroduce these aspects again. I have noticed that Yelp has a maintained checkin feature that has Dukes, Barons, Kings, and badges. I have some ideas I think Swarm should adapt, but I'll dedicate another article to that subject in the future.

Via foursquare.com

Goodbye old Foursquare.

I'm glad I got to the top once or twice.

Maybe I'll get my badges framed.