[myNetWords.com] : Foursquare

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Foursquare

Updated : Monday 12 July 2010

Foursquare is a mobile phone application (Iphone, Blackberry, android,) created in 2009 by 4 very inspired young Americans, which allows you to follow the movements of your friends who are part of this community and find out which are the places to go and the ones to avoid, according to the members of Foursquare. It’s both a social network and a micro blogging site, where people post comments on the places they’ve been, and it’s also a "tourist guide" with recommendations, as well as being a game.

Foursquare is actually based on geopositioning and GPS technology. The application enables you to inform your contacts (the other members of Foursquare) of your movements in one click. Foursquare offers a list of shops and restaurants in your area, and all you have to do is choose the shop where you are, from that list, and click on "check in". This shows exactly where you are. And if that particular shop is not yet on the Foursquare list, you can add it. Why would you want to be tracked? Well, you could hook up with your friends, if you know they are in the neighbourhood. All you have to do is download your friends from your address book, or your Facebook or Twitter account.

You can meet members of Foursquare you don’t know, but with whom you have something in common: you go to the same place, a café for instance. That’s why Foursquare is like a social network, not to say a dating site. When you meet another member of Foursquare, you can "check in" with them. This, in Foursquare speak, is a friendly way of making contact.

What’s more, with Foursquare, you can find out the highlights of the area you’re in as well as the low points. You might, for instance, find out exactly what animal ingredients they use in the local pizzeria. On the other hand, you might wish you hadn’t.

Foursquare is also fun, it rewards its most active members with badges that are visible on their profile (or Foursquare page). No mystery here, if you want to win a badge all you have to do is "check in" often enough. If you check in 50 times, you win the "Superstar" badge. If you check in at 5 airports, you get the really cool "Jetsetter" badge. And 20 check-ins at pizzerias will get you the coveted "Pizzaiolo" badge! If you are out after 3am on a week night, you can have the great thrill of receiving your “School Night" badge, though your parents might not be so enthusiastic.

Regular customers of shops, cafés and restaurants get special advantages such as price reductions, as Foursquare is entering into more and more partnerships with sellers and advertisers. For the moment, though, privileges available to Foursquare members are still very limited. The person with the most "check-ins" in the same place gets the title of Mayor. All this actually means in terms of privileges is that once you’ve proved who you are, you get a free drink. Foursquare now has over one million users, and is attracting the attention of the big players on the internet: Google and Yahoo, both interested in social networking sites, are said to have offered to buy it.

Tempted by Foursquare? Not really – do we need yet another tool to stay in contact with our friends IRL? What with Twitter, Facebook and the mobile phone, we are already in touch with them for 20 hours out of 24, which is close to saturation point. But if it means we no longer have to listen to the guy next to us on the Tube yelling “So, where are you?” into his mobile, this application could clearly be good for the nerve endings. Tracking can have unintended consequences, however. For one thing, you can forget the old excuse of the tunnel: "You’re breaking up, I’m going into a tunnel" to get rid of someone you don’t want to talk to, when in fact you’ve just "checked in" to a tapas bar in Smithfield. Or supposing your boss thinks you’re with a customer, and finds out you’ve been topping up your tan in the park, not to mention the perils of Foursquare for anyone cheating on their partner.

It seems, too, that Foursquare is proving a godsend for burglar geeks (and yes, they do exist) who use the information from Foursquare, relayed by Twitter (you can synchronise Twitter and Foursquare) to work out the best time to do some undisturbed breaking and entering. Foursquare is good for their nerve endings, too.

You might also ask what is the point of competing for badges, which are to the Foursquare community what Pokemons and suchlike are to schoolchildren. Do they really act as an incentive on anyone other than the prepubescent? Who in their right mind, frankly, wants the title of "Douchebag", the mark of stupidity awarded to those who frequent venues labelled, on the basis of somewhat dubious criteria, as nerdy – you’ll get it, though, unless you stick to strictly upmarket shops. A touch of masochism is required here. You can have the most fun by making the game work for you – cheat, and you’ll win badges easily. Just walk down London’s Oxford Street, checking in each time you pass a major department store: your check-in score will shoot up, even if you never set foot in any of them. Maybe you’ll get special offers from these shops, but real bargains are rare and you pay a high price for them: no sooner do you register your presence somewhere than you’ll be bombarded with local advertising.

One could argue that if Foursquare continues to gather momentum, it could be used as a weapon against retailers. If you have a bad experience with an ill-tempered waiter, you can threaten to report him on Foursquare. In Paris, that could be useful! And when you’re travelling, it might be interesting to look up the places the “locals’ recommend – and vice versa. It’s one way of meeting the locals, and who knows where that could lead. All things considered, a little of Foursquare could go a long way.