Foursquare Geo Locating Social Media – Friend or Foe
I am a social media junkie (SMJ), or at least a SMJ wannabe. About a month ago, 3/2/2010 to be exact, I started using foursquare, a geo-locating social media. Just last year, 2009, foursquare launched at SXSW Interactive here in Austin, TX. So, being in Austin, I’m a year late in getting on foursquare. Now I am trying to figure out what it is good for.
First the basics. You sign up for free. All you need is an email address and tell foursquare what is your location, e.g.: Austin, TX. Next, you can check-in – meaning tell foursquare (and the world) where you are. Sound scary? Stay with me.
To me, foursquare makes no sense unless you have it on your phone. Lucky for you and me, foursquare has apps for that – e.g.: Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm and other devices. So go get your flavor. Once you do, and you check-in, your smart phone checks your GPS location, communicates that to foursquare and gives you a selection of venues that have been entered into the system and are close to your location. If you see a venue that matches where you are, i.e., businesses, schools, parks, restaurants, etc., you highlight it, click it and follow the simple check-in instructions. You can even add some brief comments, à la Twitter.
Speaking of Twitter, foursquare has seriously diminished my tweet frequency. Before foursquare, I would often tweet about my location. Now I use foursquare for geo locating social media. But you can synch your foursquare account with your Twitter and your Facebook accounts, so you can blast this mundane information everywhere.
I use the word “mundane” because that’s what one of my followers on Twitter told me. Read below:
I’m a bit confused Kevin. In your class you said not to overwhelm people with incessant mundane updates, but I get updates from you every few hours with stuff like “at HEB”! Really? I’m thinking you signed up for some service that automatically updates your location every few hours, so thought you might not know you are inundating people with “mundane”!
OK! Well, if you don’t want to annoy your Twitter followers or your Facebook friends, you can opt not to update these social media when you check-in with foursquare.
Foursquare encourages people to explore their environments. It has all kinds of badges you can earn by checking in and if you have the most check-ins at a particular venue, you become the mayor! Foursquare also suggests that businesses can reward people for checking in at their businesses. For instance, show your phone to a server, proving you have 10+ checkins, – get a free cup o’ Joe. Lot’s of possibilities. Currently, I am mayor of 6 venues – have haven’t won a thing. That’s OK. My mayorships are all about public service 
Log in on the foursquare website to see all your badges, your mayorships, and more.
Have fun out there and be careful.