Want to become the Mayor of your favorite café or your favorite clothing store? With foursquare, you can! Foursquare is a location-based social networking tool that allows you to not only tell your friends what type of latte you are drinking, but exactly where you are drinking that latte. Foursquare calls this “checking-in” and uses GPS coordinates from your mobile phone to show others where you are.

Foursquare is similar to MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter through the use of “friends”. Let’s face it; it would be pretty boring to check-in where you are if you didn’t have anyone participating with you. Sharing the experience with your friends allows you to see where everyone is, meet up, surprise someone at a restaurant, or see what others have recommended at various points of interest.

Ever wonder which of your friends really frequents a particular coffee shop the most? Foursquare tracks it. In fact, you really can become the “Mayor” of your favorite store by having the highest check-ins of all foursquare users at that store. Businesses are starting to take advantage of this as a way to track and reward their frequent customers with freebies and discounts. You can also earn points with foursquare to earn “badges”. The concept is the more “interesting” your life, the higher your score.

The danger lies in who you allow to be your friend. If you allow someone that you don’t know as your friend because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or are excited to have a lot of friends, you could be allowing dangerous people access to your exact location. Err on the side of being very choosy and allowing only close friends to follow you.

Parents, I’d like to challenge you to learn more about Foursquare, the pros and the cons, and be proactive in talking to your children about it. Discuss if the tool will be allowed, how to properly use it, and who they are allowed to add as friends. Be sure and set up your own account and add yourself as your child’s friend  to see where they are and who is on their friends list.