MTS, a leading Russian mobile operator and retailer, announced yesterday it will offer Foursquare check-in points at its 3,200 outlets throughout Russia, beginning in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
MTS will organize a variety of marketing strategies to acquaint Foursquare users with MTS offers. MTS aims to draw a young and dynamic demographic to its outlets.
Foursquare is likely hoping to improve its still poor record in Russia. According to AppAppeal, a website that uses Alexa traffic data to compare web applications, Foursquare is ranked 2110 on the list of Russia’s most popular websites, based on a combination of average daily visitors and page views. By comparison, Foursquare is ranked 630 in the USA, 413 in Austria, and 249 in Indonesia. A mere 2.3% of Foursquare users come from Russia, and they generate only 1.7% of the page views on Foursquare, which still doesn’t provide, to date, a full-Russian version.
Foursquare’s main competitor on the Russian market is AlterGeo, a service created in 2008 that claims 700,000 registered users, including up to 150,000 active users in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev as well as other Russian and Ukrainian cities.
The cooperation between MTS and Foursquare may have been inspired by an event held last year in the U.S. by Foursquare and the fast-food chain McDonald’s. On what was proclaimed Foursquare Day (Apr. 16), McDonald’s offered 100 gift cards to Foursquare users who visited a McDonald’s restaurant. While not guaranteed a prize, many users visited McDonald’s for the chance to win the $5 and $10 gift cards, increasing the chain’s foot traffic by 33% in one day.
Source: MTS, AppAppeal, Econsultancy, AlterGeo
