Hey everyone,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an entry here. I’ve been really trying hard to re-build the current site and make it more engaging the user. Based on the news story today about Foursquare adding a feature to let you know how far off you are from obtaining mayorship - I felt it was important add a response to this new story.

Here at WWIBM - we are NOT a investor sponsored company nor have 10 to 100 developers working on this product. It’s just me - Greg Avola - and I built this product for myself and the community. I thought it would a great way to engage the users of the foursquare to plan your attack on getting the mayorships you want.

Now that foursquare has released their own version of this feature - everyone is saying what will happen to WWIBM? The short answer - nothing. We are not a competitor to foursquare. We just enhance the experience of foursquare to users. That is what the site is designed and developed to do and we will continue to do that as long as the users enjoy it.

Coming in September - we will have a brand new site with new feature including the ability to vote on public shares, better sharing options, and faster response time. Foursquare has also indicated to us that they are going to allow this new data to be sourced by the API which means we can do more stuff about this - including sorting by number of times it will take you to be mayor and a lot more.

Thanks again for your support and we can’t wait to show you what’s new!

Greg
Creator of When Will I Be Mayor

Hello everyone,

As I mentioned yesterday - we’re about to hit 8K registered users. I have never thought this site would be as popular as it is today. With that in my mind - I’ve gone back to drawing board - trying to craft up some new features that will make When Will I Be Mayor to best yet - however I would love your input.

So send me a reply on Twitter to @mayorplease, a comment, or a link with your favorite feature that you are dying to see in the next release!

Just a note: Al ot of people have been asking for a list of venues that they are closing to loosing the mayor title. This is currently no possible due to the fact that Foursquare doesn’t allow developers to access any “top 10” or “list of all users who have checked into the spot” option.

Thanks, Greg

Hello everyone! I hope you having a good weekend. Over at WWIBM, I’ve been cooking up something good for you - based on all your feedback. Today - I’ve release some new features that hopefully will get your pretty excited to use When Will I Be Mayor for your foursquare needs.

We hope you’ll enjoy these features - and as they are new - let us know if anything goes bonkers by sending a tweet to @mayorplease.

Thanks Greg

So it’s been about 4 days since our posts on Mashable, TechCrunch, and CNN - and we are still in shock on all the positive feedback that we have been getting and press. With that said, We thought it would be a great idea to dedicate a page to show our appreciation for all the wonderful people that have made this site what is today. You can view all the article that mentioned WWIBM at http://whenwillibemayor.com/press. If you are wrote a story about us - please let us know by sending a tweet to @mayorplease and I’ll add your link the page.

So with all the generous press that we have been receiving, I wanted to share with you how that press as turned this “little website that could” in to a success (at least for me). Personally - I’ve never had any of project go viral like this - so it’s pretty humbling. On Memorial Day Monday (5/31), we had about 500+ registered users. That is pretty amazing considering that we didn’t have any press - and the site was spread by just word of mouth. On the day of the TechCrunch and Mashable article, we jumped form 500 users to 3,000. Yes - 3,000. That’s pretty amazing in a 24 hour period - and I only have you guys to thank. We’ve been growing steadily - and as of this writing we are closing in on 4,000 users. Take a look at the sign-ups per day screenshot below - to see how crazy it has been since the TechCrunch and Mashable article releases.

We also had a crazy 7K unique visitors on that day, generating about 30K page views. Absolutely amazing. One of the cool stats - that we had at least 1 user from every State in the US visit the site in the past 4 days. Below is a screenshot of the top 10 US states that have visited the site:

So in closing - I wanted to thank you all for visiting, signing up, and continuing to support the site. I’ve received some good feedback from a lot of you. I really appreciate it. I am currently working the next version of the site that will feature many of your feature requests - including searching by Venue ID, Monitoring Venues where you are already mayor, and adding a feature to share your progress with your friends. Look for new stuff soon - and thanks again for all your support!

Thanks, Greg

photo credit lemontwist

We realize that privacy is important to everyone - especially when you are dealing with a geo-location application. That is why I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce our privacy policy for WWIBM. Here are a few notes that hopefully will keep you at ease:

We do not store any historical data on your check-ins from foursquare. This means that your check-in data is not housed on WWIBM servers - it stays on Foursquare’s server. So rest assured that your data is safe. This tool is only used for visualization purposes. The only data that WWIBM stores is the following:

— Your email address

— Your username that you choose at signup

— Foursquare Token and Secret

— Venue names/IDs that you have monitored

That’s pretty much it! I know that most you might have already detected this - but I wanted to make it clear that we are not storing any username/passwords or any history data from foursquare. All calls to foursquare purely done through the API.

For more information on our privacy policy go to http://whenwillibemayor.com/privacy

Maybe by now - you’ve seen the Mashable article about WWBIM. If not - you should read it prior to reading this post. I just wanted to post a quick follow-up on my thoughts on “gaming” foursquare via WWBIM. The article make a point that WWBIM is “gaming” the system to determine when you’ll get mayorships. The point of WWBIM isn’t to “game” the system - but just to give you an idea on how you are doing. “Gaming” to me - is affecting the outcome of something, while I think we are just providing “guidance” on mayorships.

With all the new promotions out there to become Mayor of venues to gain discounts at your favorite shops - I figured that this would be a great application to track that progress - and the indent wasn’t to allow people to game the system - rather give them insight into their history on foursquare.

It’s like a dream come true! Thanks again for all your support - and let us know how we can make it better!

It’s pretty amazing to feature with other great applications like Be The Mayor. who use the Foursquare API.

Hello everyone,

This morning we sent out our first batch of monitor emails that everyone had been asking about. For everyone that monitored a venue from 5/21 until now - should have received an indicating your progress your favorite venues.

From now one - you should receive an email every Sunday. If you didn’t receive the email - or you have problems going forward with the monitoring process. Let me know at @mayorplease on Twitter.

• Greg

It’s been about 6 days since 2.0 is live, and here I am already pushing out a new feature - and its search.

Now you can search a venue and a location and get the mayor and your check-in history for that venue. While it may be a small feature - you might curious and want to see is the mayor of the world’s favorite venues like Twitter HQ, or Times Square. The possibilities are endless!

Want a feature added to When Will I Be Mayor? Send us tweet on Twitter @mayorplease

• Greg