On Monday, April 16, 2012, FourSquarer’s or 4sq’ers around the world will be celebrating Foursquare Day!

What the heck is Foursquare and what is the celebration all about, you may ask.

Foursquare is actually a location-based social networking website for smartphones where users “check in” at venues and connect with friends. The location is based on GPS hardware in the mobile phone or network location provided by Foursquare.

Every “check-in” is rewarded with points and with enough points, “badges“.  They can then choose to have their check-ins posted on their Twitter or  Facebook accounts, or both.

Foursquare users may also leave tips and photos for each venue to be shared with their friends and/or other users.  For those who have done the most # of “check-ins” in a venue, they are crowned as “MAYORS“.

For some establishments in the US and Europe, and in the bigger cities of Manila and Cebu in the Philppines, they give out “specials” or reward “check-ins” and loyal users with promos, discounts or freebies, especially to “MAYORS”.

In GenSan, Piyesta Resto Bar is the very first venue to offer 4sq “Specials”.

On the other hand, Foursquare Day (stylized as 4sqDay) is a global social media holiday that was first observed on April 16, 2010 in hundreds of cities around the world.  On March 26, 2010 the New York City-based Foursquare, officially declared April 16 “Foursquare Day” after a grass-roots movement that began in Tampa, Florida gained traction and eventually spread to hundreds of cities throughout the world.

For this year, 1,820 foursquare communities worldwide will be celebrating it, and guess what, General Santos City is one of them!

I am then inviting Foursquare users in GenSan and throughout the rest of Soccsksargen to join this very first global social media event to be conducted here on April 16, 2012, Monday at 5:30pm

Gaisano Mall of GenSan (see Map here) is kind enough to offer their Port Cafe as the official 4sqday venue and is serving food to all attendees.  It will be an eyeball of sorts of Foursquare users in the region.  They can join a few exciting games during the meetup and hopefully, Sun Cellular which has just strengthened their signal in Mindanao  (read here) will be supporting the meetup with a few prizes. Yay!

Owners/managers/proprietors of establishments are also encouraged to attend this so that they could be oriented on the power of Foursquare in promoting their services and goods online.

By the way, Foursquare sent me a parcel via FedEx last week straight from New York containing some cute swags and attendees to the 4sqday meetup at Gaisano Mall on April 16 may get them if they’re lucky!  See them in a photo below..

To sign up, join the GenSan 4sq community and SIMPLY CLICK THIS.

Promise, this very first Foursquare Day Meetup in GenSan will be be a blast and who knows, you might be crowned as the FOURSQUARE KING and QUEEN of Soccsksargen!  See you there!

Note: Please share and retweet this and use these hashtags:  #4sq, #4sqday and #4sqGenSan.  Thanks. Salamat Alexis Chua for the official poster above.