Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Does anyone use Foursquare?
I hear more and more about services on smart phones that use location-based services. One of them is Foursquare.
At its most basic, as I understand it, you use an application (a wee programme) on your phone to connect with other people and share you location with them. At one level, I think it's about helping people find one another. At another level it seems to be part of the current trend for 'self-proclamation' that the web encourages.
I'm not sure what I make of it. Anyone use it?
At its most basic, as I understand it, you use an application (a wee programme) on your phone to connect with other people and share you location with them. At one level, I think it's about helping people find one another. At another level it seems to be part of the current trend for 'self-proclamation' that the web encourages.
I'm not sure what I make of it. Anyone use it?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Malcolm on
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I've used it. I wouldn't say I use it.
It's vaguely useful if enough of your friends use it to enable serendipitous meetings. But frankly you can do exactly the same thing through Facebook these days, and there's a far greater likelihood your friends are on Facebook.
If you have an application-capable phone (iPhone, Android etc) it's pretty simple (and free) to install these and try them out - give it a whirl. If you don't then I wouldn't rush out to buy a new phone for this alone
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Permalink Reply by Sophie Smith on
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I have a theory it's like the saying "if the music's too loud, you're too old". I'm 31 and work in digital, but I can't be bothered with it. Maybe I'm just too old to see the point!
My second theory is web applications like twitter etc have a very narrow, specific use at which they are great - Greater Manchester police tweeted every 999 call in 24 hours recently and really made a great point about how the system was abused (people reporting lost dogs etc). Things like FourSquare might be useful if you have a local pub where people you know regularly go, and you can think "ooh, I wonder who's in the pub" and then go along if anyone you know is. A friend of mine is a tattooist, knows a lot of tattooists in London: she might use it as a tattoo convention to find out which of her mates are there. Like I said, useful in a narrow context.
I was at a digital convention recently where they did a case study on it: MacDonalds offered a 1 in 10 chance of winning a free burger voucher (worth about a quid I guess) if you checked in on Foursquare at one of the restaurants. Footfall increased by a significant amount that day, they proved they were hip and digitally-savvy. But would these people have visited that week anyway, and just changed the day they went along? Not sure. Interesting exercise but it sounds like a load of bother to me.
Incidentally, some people are concerned about how it shows your house is empty if you check in elsewhere! Someone once described Foursquare as a"a stalker's dream!"
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