Are you hooked on FourSquare yet?

As with twitter, I was pretty cynical about FourSquare as a social media tool, let alone a viable marketing one.

Based on news from SMX Advanced in Seattle, it seems many businesses think the same.

As a user I’m now pretty hooked already, habitually checking into every location I visit, while getting (overly) excited when I find a venue that hasn’t been logged before, or earning a new badge.  You can now show off your well-earned badges in Facebook with this nifty app.

However, the need to gain traction with businesses is clearly more of a challenge. there are very few examples of UK companies leveraging rewards for mayorships or even bespoke badges; probably due to FourSquare’s US location. At the moment, there’s a huge delay on registering your company on Foursquare if you’re outside the US so creating your own badges is going to take time.

Hopefully they’ll open a European office soon, or develop a more “self-service” approach to badge creation.

But what do you think?