Foursquare Unlocks a Badge for Waze
Waze, the navigation and traffic-information app, offers something for the driver as well as the gamer, encouraging them to help it map new streets with a Pac Man-style simulation that awards points for taking uncharted routes.
On Thursday, the start-up plans to announce new incentives tied to Foursquare, another mobile-social app. Users of both services will be able to check in to locations through Waze, and after the third check-in, they’ll unlock a new “Road Warrior” badge.
The two apps, both of which use social games to build crowdsourced information, have similar goals, said Di-Ann Eisnor, community geographer at Waze. This is the first time Foursquare has created a badge–one of the ways that the service rewards frequent users–that’s tied to another app, said Dennis Crowley, a co-founder of the New York start-up.