Since I have become addicted to Foursquare recently, the location check-in service, I set upon finding the best tips to get to the top of Foursquare’s leaderboard while playing fair.

Here are the top 5 tips I can give you:

1) If you want to become mayor, check-in to places which you know that you’ll be able to check-in to frequently, as many times as possible. Didn’t find your place on Foursquare already? Add it. Don’t forget and don’t neglect for someone else may steal your mayorship from you.

2) Foursquare resets its leaderboard on Sunday nights so make sure to start early in the week.

3) Check-in to new places because these grant you 5 extra points.

4) Get familiar with how to unlock your special badges and work on unlocking them. Here are two great badges lists:
TonyFelice.Wordpress.com and TheKruser.com

5) Don’t cheat. For the sake of the community, don’t check-in to places if you’re not really there. This only hurts the whole user experience on Foursquare.

One feature I feel is missing in Foursquare: Once I check-in to a place, I want the app to scan all my contacts and tell me the 5-10 users who are closest to my proximity at any given time. This will enable users to maximize the potential of meeting people in their network more frequently and make for a more cohesive user-base.

And finally, here’s a good, short Foursquare tutorial for you:

(Guest post by Dorine Sinigaglia)

Fotobabble launched its new iPhone app today, allowing people to add voice to the photos they send and share with friends and family via Email, Twitter, Facebook or an iPhone. With the new Fotobabble iPhone app, users can easily create talking photos within seconds with a few clicks on a Web browser or their iPhone.

The possibilities of what one can do with talking photos are simply endless, since adding life to photos is a tool truly everyone can enjoy and benefit from. As if the experience of sharing photos is not fun enough, knowing I can add my voice to a photo I want to share really allows the viewer to share the memories with me. A few cool memories I look forward to capturing my voice & sharing with others: a friend’s live wedding engagement and sharing it with family; sending a picture to my roommate with my voice describing the perfect couch for our living room; recording my voice in a home-made greeting card or send a talking postcard from my vacation to Hawaii. Fotobabble gives a whole new meaning to the famous quote: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Creating and sharing a “Fotobabble” takes seconds, is free to use and is now available for users who are out and about with their iPhones. After downloading the free Fotobabble iPhone app, users just upload a photo and record their voice directly through their computer’s microphone to create a talking photo. They then have the option to select an existing photo or a snap a new one and then record their voice. Whether using a computer or an Phone, users can share talking photos via Email, Facebook, Twitter, or embed them into a blog or Website.

Kamal Shah, CEO of Fotobabble, noted that there are tens of billions of static photos on the Web without voice or sound – three billion photos of which are uploaded to Facebook each month alone! “Using Fotobabble, people and businesses can greatly enhance these images with the energy and emotion of voice” – says Shah.

Fotobabble for Fun & Communication:

Fotobabble for Business:

Businesses can also utilize Fotobabbles to promote their product, engage with customers online more effectively or to increase the number of visitors to their Website, blog or Facebook page. Fotobabbles are easily embedded anywhere on the Web and greatly improve how images are presented and experienced online for your customers.

Brand and ad agencies may use Fotobabble as a social media marketing platform. Fotobabble’s flexibility makes it easy to build customized viral marketing campaigns that are more engaging than text or static photos and are much simpler than video to create and share. Brands can build truly unique campaigns using Fotobabble in contests, Facebook, Twitter and blogs – to name a few.

Companies and celebrities can leverage the power of Fotobabble by creating talking photos to raise awareness for their brand and better engage with their customers and fans.

Fotobabble takes photo sharing to a whole new level. No software is needed to download the app, since Fotobabble supports PCs, Macs and the Apple iPhone, making it easy for people to create talking photos and share them with friends, family, their business – or with the whole world. You may download the free Fotobabble iPhone App here to start adding life to your static photos.

Dorine Sinigaglia is the Account & Content Manager at Blonde 2.0.

(Guest Post by Ilan Peer)

Since I don’t have an iPhone, it rarely happens that I update my location status, or tweeting where i hang out. To top this all off, I don’t even fully utilize this cool app that I’m writing about! Since it really caught my attention, I wanted to share my thoughts on foursquare – an application that allows you explore your city – has unlocked a certain code for location based service engagement and positively affected income of many local businesses.

An interesting fact about foursquare is that one of their Founders, Dennis Crowley, is a also the former Founder of Dodgeball – another location-based social network that was acquired by Google (can you see the pattern here?). I once read that Dennis was a student of Clay Shirky – which makes his background very credible. Foursquare started with 12 cities and have already reached 53!

The simplicity of the foursquare game is amazing. People “tag” places and venues to get points and badges that will place them in a higher social graph. Meanwhile, local businesses enjoy the uprising of visits to their establishments. The latter part may sponsor a free drink or snack for the mayors (user with most visits to their venue). It is easy to see how this service is addicting when distinguished members of the high-tech industry Tweet about their mayorship.

Here is the foursquare business plan and it’s simple: there are about 150 venues offering mayor specials (treats exclusively for top visitors).

The game is based on a social network of recommendations. Whether it’s a new pub, a special dish or friends’ based recommendation, there are 3 advantages that you can benefit from:

1. Find Your Friends – if not, what the heck are we all doing in facebook??

2. Points and Badges – getting recognition, free drinks and nachos!

3. Explore the City – as they put it: “Think less ‘the food here is top notch!’ and more ‘Go here, do this’ “

These tags and friending-up people are very common these days: follows, lists, groups and fan pages – all these “sort us up.”

It is like when Twitter came up with lists. I think Twitter is in need for people to sort and list the huge directory of people in their data base. As far as foursquare goes, us users will probably turn to little Yellow Page agents, going places, tagging and passing info on to as personal tips (hence the friends layer: the WOM effect).

I’m very close, yet still far from using foursquare since they have not hit Tel-Aviv yet. When foursquare does decide to hit tel aviv, i bet you’ll see me running the streets looking to tag new venues and becoming the mayor of my favorite diners.

Until then, I’ll give it a try with the Israeli new site called CUin.co.il which allows users to look up their friends from Facebook (via Facebook connect) and see where they have checked in.

Update:
Foursquare announced they will open their service for Tel Aviv city in the next few days
Article at Nana10.co.il [in hebrew]

And a presentation by Dennis Crowley at Mobile Monday Amsterdam:

photo by: the lovely miss604

Ilan Peer is the Advertising and Marketing Manager at Blonde 2.0

He is a veteran in the Israeli interactive industry. He’s experienced in creative, design, UI, account managing and media buying. Technology is his fetish. He’s an early adaptor and a gadget freak.

Guest Post by Ahuvah Berger

(Disclosure WorldMate is a client of Blonde 2.0)

WorldMate has updated their travel iPhone app and now enables users to share their itinerary with family, friends and colleagues, plus get a 5-day weather forecast wherever they are in the world. The new version WorldMate 1.6 offers the new features for free and Gold subscribers.

This is a great update for Road Warriors (men and women who spend their lives traveling for work) to stay connected with their iPhone contacts. With one click – they can share their itinerary with any of their iPhone contacts.

Another fantastic update is the new 5-Day Weather Forecast with three new options:

• Current city: Get the 5-day weather forecast for the city you’re currently in. Don’t get caught in the rain without an umbrella, or in the cold without your coat. You’ll leave for work knowing exactly what to expect.

• Itinerary Cities: Get the 5-day weather forecast for the cities on your itinerary, so you know if you should pack an umbrella, sunscreen or both.

• All Cities: Select any of the cities listed for a 5-day weather forecast.

Get the upgrade now at the App Store and share it with your friends and colleagues!

WorldMate was generous enough to give us 10 iPhone Gold app invites for Blonde 2.0 readers. Who wants ‘em? First 10 to comment on our blog will get them!

Last December at the LeWeb conference in Paris I sat in on an interesting panel discussion entitled Love in Motion: Why are Mobile Social Networks Booming?  The panelists, Antonio Vince Staybol of itsmy.com, Dr. KF Lai of BuzzCity and Ewan Spence of WuBud, talked about what mobile social networks are, who uses them and what they use them for, how mobile social networks are monetized as well as where they are going in the future. 

Did you know that there are 4 billion mobile phones in the world?  There are only 1 billion Internet users and 1 billion television sets so, as you can see, mobile is a huge force.  In fact,in many parts of the world mobile phones are the only screens and mobile is the only way for people to get on the Internet.  That’s where mobile social networks come in.

Users of mobile social networks are different from regular social network users because, for many of them, mobile social networks are the only way they are able to access the Internet.  The mobile social networking platform is popular amongst truck drivers and cab drivers who are on the road a lot and far from their computers, as well as in countries like South Africa, India and Indonesia where many people just don’t have personal computers or Internet.  Soldiers are also big users of mobile social networks.

Antonio Vince Staybol offered up a few interesting facts about itsmy.com, which illustrate how mobile social networks are being used.  itsmy.com has a total of 2.5 million users who, on average, spend 52 hours a month on the itsmy.com mobile site.  60% of these users don’t have an email address and 46% have never used an online social network and may not even know what one is.  The bulk of these users are aged from 21 to 35.  However, mobile social networks are growing in popularity amongst the older crowd with users up to 60.  According to the panel, the reason for this is that mobile social networks are easier to understand– there are only 9 buttons on a phone so the whole process is much more simplified than social networks on the Web.

Want to learn more?  Watch my videos of the panel discussion below.

I’ve been receiving a lot of gifts lately as my birthday and the holidays just passed, but one of the coolest things that I’ve received lately was the new Sumsung Omnia i900 phone, which Samsung was kind enough to give me as part of their marketing campaign with McCann Digital.  McCann Digital is turning to social media with this campaign and is actually giving the phone to bloggers to use in their daily lives and share their experiences with their followers/friends.  The phone is pretty neat so I thought I’d share some of its best features with you.

Like the iPhone, the Samsung Omnia has a large touch screen and is based on applications and widgets.  The phone includes a main screen that you can customize with widgets of your choice, including the time in multiple time zones, games and more.  The phone also comes with a variety of useful applications, including FM radio, the “Touch Player” mp3 and video player, enhanced GPS, full Microsoft Office including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote so you can view all of your Office files on the go, the Opera mobile browser and more.  Additionally, the camera on the Samsung Omnia has a really simple interface and shoots nice photos and videos.  One of my favorite features of the Omnia is the RSS reader that updates all my feeds throughout the day to bring me content from my favorite bloggers and friends around the world, as well as a podcast player that I can use to watch all of my friends’ recent podcasts. Thank you Samsung for this very lovely gift.

Oftentime brands don’t understand why the online videos they post don’t become viral. Many times the reason for this is the fact that their videos focus too much on the brand and not on the “viral”. If a video is not cool enough for me or you to pass on to our friends, then most chances are that no one else will pass it on to their friends either.  Check out this great video Samsung did for their new Omnia (i900) phone which received 2,337,666 views already on YouTube. It’s a great example for how a video goes viral if it’s actually entertaining for the audience.

Mobilhood a new mobile social network  has just launched recently and to kick things off in a fun, interactive manner, they are currently holding an iPod Touch Contest.

Mobilhood is a community where users can download free ringtones, wallpapers, videotones and screensavers for their mobile phones, or create and upload their own “mobile fashion” to share. Mobilhood prides itself on giving rewards for high quality user generated content. Users with the most activity and best ratings win prizes. Each action that users take within the community (uploading wallpapers, screensavers, ringtones and videotones; inviting friends; having other people download your stuff; rating other people’s creations; playing games; etc.) earns users Virtual Coins (VCs) which can be traded in for prizes. Mobilhood also serves as a social network where users can become friends with one another and connect via mail, comments and ratings.

Aside from the usual prizes and to celebrate their launch, for the next few weeks Mobilhood will be giving away a free iPod touch each Monday to those talented designers whose content gets the most attention from other users. All artists, designers, animators, musicians and everyone else is invited to join.

Mobilhood will be giving away iPods to those users that upload the mobile content that gets the most votes for that week. All users have to do is upload their masterpieces to the site and ask people to vote for them. Any designers who think they have great designs for mobile wallpapers, screensavers, ringtones or videotones can participate and get the chance to walk away with a brand new iPod Touch.

In addition to the iPod Touch, the winners will receive the respect they deserve, as well as international recognition. Weekly winners will be posted on all of the Mobilhood contest banners for the whole world to see their face, their name and their artistic abilities.

Since Mobilhood is all about users sharing and downloading mobile content for free, the iPod Touch contest will bring in an even larger variety of creative and original free mobile downloads for their users.

Mobilhood is a great site offering lots of quality mobile content for free. Their whole philosophy is based on ”the more you give, the more you get” and they are offering all this content for free with the hope of enlarging their community and making their users happy so that they would come back often. Mobilhood also plans to soon add mobile phones and gadgets reviews to its site and hopes to become the destination site for mobile users to turn to when they are looking for any information regarding anything mobile.

By giving away so much free mobile content, information, reviews and highly rewarding its users at the same time, Mobilhood is definitely proving itself to be an industry player to watch in the following months.