Drive-by Foursquaring

BY FOLLOWING PEOPLE on Foursquare, you can get ideas about where people hang out. An hour before Edelman's Trust Barometer hit the streets, a half dozen people were checked into the Westbury Hotel. That caught my eye at 9AM. During Dublin's Web Summit, four or five people checked into several nightclubs, making it easy to bump into friends. But would you want to let people know you're at the local Spar? Adrian Weckler doesn't think that's smart--but he's not familiar with my local newsagent. If I show Tommy at Costcutter's proof of my check-in, he returns the favour with a deep discount of croissants and we're both happy. And if I'm walking NYC, I check into my first bagel bakery because that alerts me to coffee promotions up the street. Foursquare's serious gaming philosophy encourages people to collect meaningless badges and to ratchet up the leaderboard with weekly point totals. In pursuit of those points, I know there must be some Drive-by Foursquaring because some people spend less than five minutes in new venues they have created themselves. I've tried spoofing Foursquare myself and understand its basic anti-driveby algorithm. But if you script and publish your virtual footfall, you can easily rack up more than 1200 points a week without leaving home. It's that kind of behaviour that deserves Adrian's attention, not the simple act of letting people know where you board your train or buy your lunch. Driveby Foursquare tactics make me wonder about friends with too much time on their hands. They're abusing my rabbit hole and they're polluting the Twitter timeline with babble worse than the hackneyed "NN" phrases that have become the sweet nothings of online citizenry.

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Sent mail2bloig using O2-3G Typepad services while Foursquaring Clonmel's Vet Clinic.

Adrian Weckler -- "Get lost with these location updates" in the Sunday Business Post, 7 Feb 10.

Claudine Beaumont -- "Foursquare enjoys surge of popularity" in the Irish Independent.

x_ref125sm #geolocation