I came across the email below while I was cleaning out my email the other day. It’s an email I sent in August of 2008 proposing a service that sounds uncannily similar to Four Square.

Oh well, would of, could of, should of, …

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Ian Mercer
Date: Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 10:06 AM
Subject: Geo games …
To: …

#1 Claim that point

Every morning we distribute 1 million points on the map
You can use your iPhone to see a map with all the points highlighted
Visit one and hit ‘claim’ – your name goes onto the map at that point with a link to your profile
Prize each day for the most places claimed by a user
Prize each month for the most places claimed by a user
Running scoreboard with overall most claims, most diverse claims, largest claim area, …

Local businesses pay us to be a claim point – to get visitors in the door :-)
or local adverts displayed when you visit a claim point (since we have your attention and know where you are)

#2 Territory wars

Form a team with up to 4 other players
Visit anywhere in a zip code (city? block? square mile?) area and hit claim
Territory belongs to a decaying average of how many members of your team have claimed that area
i.e. all five of you claim it today, you probably own it, at least for a while
nobody visits for a week, your 5 person claim is now worth only one point and a single visit from someone else can take it away

Scoreboard for each city – leading teams, most captures this week, …

Overall scoreboard – most territory owned by a team in their own country, in the world, most countries occupied by a team, most states occupied, …

Visit far out areas to claim land that might never be visited by someone else

Go visit those areas belonging to competing teams to try to knock them down

Build your empire …

Issue challenges to other teams – “We own Bellevue, and we are going to keep it!”

Time? held at midnight local time? or average time held during the day? Do we want to promote people driving around late at night trying to capture the map?