Today was Foursquare Day worldwide (get it…April 16 is 4, 4^2!). Foursquare Day started as a grassroots effort in 2010 and quickly spread to communities all over the world. Foursquare Day is celebrated differently everywhere, and at Duke we celebrated it by encouraging more students to use the tool at Duke in new and different ways.

We had a table on the main plaza at Duke staffed by students to celebrate the event.

The students leading the effort were Tre’Ellis Terrell Scott and Yaqi Zhang, both first-year students at Duke. They recruited some other student volunteers and spent the bulk of the day on the plaza talking to their peers about what foursquare is and encouraging others to follow DukeU on foursquare.

We had buttons, stickers, t-shirts and other fun giveaways as part of the event. We also printed out a big map of the campus for students to write out tips and reviews on sticky notes for us to add to the DukeU foursquare venues.

It was good timing that the day corresponded with Blue Devil Days, Duke’s main recruitment event for prospective freshman and their families, and these incoming students were able to learn about a new tool to help them explore Duke during their visit and for when they come to live on campus in the fall. We even created a special Blue Devil Days foursquare list for prospectives to use while they are exploring campus this month.

How are you using foursquare in your efforts? Please leave comments below sharing your thoughts on the application.