Making badges a real reflection of your real-world expertise

Some badges are fun and some are frivolous, but the ones that get us most excited are the ones that reflect real-world feats, like mastering the pizza circuit or keeping print alive. Those are the badges that represent who you are and what you know best. And, the more you unlock, the more your Trophy Case becomes a reflection of your real-world expertise. That’s why we’re introducing expertise badges (that level!) – badges that show off who you are and what you know.

Over the next day our core 24 expertise badges will start leveling up the more you go out and explore.

The rules are the same for all your areas of expertise:

• You hit Level 1 for checking in five times to a place in a category, or three unique places.
• Level 2 is for five unique places.
• And from there, every level up is five more unique places, so you get rewarded for exploration!

Take a look at the new Expertise section of your Trophy Case (click on ‘Badges’ to see yours) to see where you stand today. You’ll see what level you’re at, what you need to do to get to the next one, and what level your friends are at. And, in the near future, we’re going to add other ways to level up, like having your tips be done by many people. Your actions within foursquare should help you build a true, rich representation of your expertise about the things you love to do.

We’ve already got all this great data on your expertise from your past check-ins, so the exciting part now is identifying the ways we can use it to help people make decisions in the real world. For instance, if you’re at a wine bar, it’s much more useful to see a Tip from a Level 8 wine expert. Or, if a karaoke buff always goes to a specific place, we can make sure that it comes up first when you’re looking to sing your heart out. There are lots of ways to use the community’s expertise to make the world more interesting, and foursquare will keep getting more useful the more you and your friends use it.

Check out your Trophy Case now to see where you’re at!

We’re also going to start building more and more badges for different types of expertise, including three new ones launching today: Herbivore, Hot Tamale, and Bento.

Check in, level up, show off to your friends, and let us know what you think in the comments!