(Wired UK - July 2010)
Linkedin is for business contacts. Facebook is for connecting with friends. Twitter is for news. What is foursquare for?
From a user's perspective I really don't see the value. In the days before check-in services, we would send an email and say "Let's catch up, let's meet here". Today you check-in and by chance maybe you will see a bunch of contacts that have also checked in at the same place. So what? A chance meeting might work, but it's still a chance. Normally, if you wanted to meet with them you would have sent an email earlier.
On the other hand from a marketer's perspective its great!
I have a bunch of friends that using foursquare to compete about who's going to be mayor of this place or another.
Check-in services encourage users to disclose as much data about themselves as possible and they do this by using "game mechanics". They reward people for playing the game with badges and stickers. It gets so addictive that very soon you are revealing all kinds of personal data. Data that builds user profiles, data that marketers love.
What do you think?
1 comment:
I think that your analysis of Foursquare lacks depth.
The value of Foursquare might not have been realized on a social networking level yet, but users can still benefit. Discovering new places is one thing! Leaving comments, tips and tags is another. Soon you will see a whole ecosystem of applications on Foursquare which were inconceivable before simply for one reason: the data was not there, because the users were not. Wait and see the LBS flourish!
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