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The media has had a lot of hype about Foursquare over the past couple of months, including CNN doing an article about FourSquare being the Twitter of 2010. FourSquare is a Social Network like Twitter but is much more tied to broadcasting your location and what you are doing at that location rather than actually engaging in conversations with your friends and followers. It works fairly simply, you go to a place and you “check in” on FourSquare and announce what you are doing at that place.
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You get points for checking in and extra points for the more times you check in a day, if its the first time you ever checked in at a place, or if you add a new place to FourSquare’s library. Since I live in the City of Casa Grande, so many places weren’t even on FourSquare’s radar that I have added about four new places in a week that weren’t listed. The application itself was hard to use on my blackberry if you have to go and visit FourSquare website and sign in. I did find they offer a FourSquare Blackberry Application that made it much easier and simpler to download and just check in without having to retype your username and password every time. The GPS in the Blackberry and FourSquare let it automatically find the place you were visiting and was often accurate right down to within a few meters. If many places are in your general area, you have to scroll through a list or sometimes add a place manually if nobody has checked in there before.
I can honestly say that downloading and using the Foursquare Blackberry Application has helped me check in more easily and it allows you to input new places with only a few extra screens so you aren’t wasting time and can quickly check in and go back to what you were doing.
I keep getting a handful of friend requests here and there, but I don’t really see a big bonus for using FourSquare for someone who telecommutes and rarely leaves the house except three times per week to have dinner and help with some events for Rock Along Productions. I don’t go out and socialize much with people and this app looks more geared for people to hang out and meet up with each other when they find that they are in the same place at the same time, or nearby.
I personally am into all things online and Social Media, and I just don’t see what the hype is about FourSquare, it is unique in its ability to broadcast locations and I actually think it helps promote and bring awareness to local establishments which is a good thing, but it isn’t an overly social network in my opinion.
If you are a user, feel free to connect with DragonBlogger on FourSquare I would be happy to connect with you.
What about my readers? Have you joined FourSquare yet? What is your opinion of the service?
-Justin Germino
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