31–39 of 39 posts
Both services can post to Facebook anyways, so if it's for the same reason of telling people where you are, why are people still sticking on Foursquare?
This is nothing new. Crazy people can be anywhere; they can follow you around, or simply be at your location. The Internet doesn't make this different, it just makes it slightly easier to target a specific individual. But Foursquare, unlike "real life", you can control. You can fake check-ins. You can simply not check in. But when someone is following you around in real life, there is nothing you can do, except maybe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that and unchecking "Show me in the 'Who's here' list in the mobile app" on the settings page.
I don't use it, but it sounds like Facebook regarding default settings are more open than closed... which is great for Foursquare and bad for a general user that never checks that.
-harryh, foursquare
I've always been skeeved out by the location sharing services; why do I want everybody to know where I am and what I'm doing? Perhaps this is generational (I'm almost 40) as almost everybody I know younger than myself happily checks in via Foursquare or Facebook, but the comment I had upon seeing the initial Loopt demo ("so now my boss can follow me around wherever I go?") retains. It could be generational, or it cou…
Why do you want people to know how much you weigh?(http://twitter.com/jamesfelixblack/status/28034592562)
Why do you want people to know that you prefer an immutable style of programming? (http://twitter.com/jamesfelixblack/status/27850952929)
Why do you want people what indie rock bands you are into right now (http://twitter.com/jamesfelixblack/status/27713440042)
The answer (at least as I see it) is that in isolation each of these particular items don't carry much meaning. But in aggregate, if I'm a friend of yours I can get a lot of value out of your twitter stream. It's a quick and easy way to keep up with the random comings & goings of your life. It's an easy way for you to share these things with your circle of friends.
It's the same thing with where you are and what you're doing. Maybe you check in at a fancy restaurant and then someone sends you a quick text telling you that a particular dish is a must order. Maybe you check in at the movies saying you're seeing the new James Bond and then someone asks you about it the next day. Maybe you check in at a bar after work and a friend you haven't seen in a while stops by to say hello. Each checkin (like a tweet) is a small look into your life that you've chosen to share with your friends. Individually, they aren't so useful, but in aggregate it adds up.
And it gets even bigger if you are part of a medium to large sized community of people all using foursquare. I like to tell people it's a little bit like telepathy. Foursquare lets me know that when my buddies get tired and go home, I can pop over the the place a couple blocks over and meet up with another crew over there. Foursquare gives me a snapshot of nearly everything going on in my "social universe" right now. It makes it easier to connect, more often, with all of my friends.
-harryh, foursquare
I've always been skeeved out by the location sharing services; why do I want everybody to know where I am and what I'm doing? Perhaps this is generational (I'm almost 40) as almost everybody I know younger than myself happily checks in via Foursquare or Facebook, but the comment I had upon seeing the initial Loopt demo ("so now my boss can follow me around wherever I go?") retains. It could be generational, or it cou…
> why do I want everybody to know where I am and what I'm doing? Why do you want people to know how much you weigh?( http://twitter.com/jamesfelixblack/status/28034592562 ) Why do you want people to know that you prefer an immutable style of programming? ( http://twitter.com/jamesfelixblack/status/27850952929 ) Why do you want people what indie rock bands you are into right now ( http://twitter.com/jamesfelixblack/st…
I don't think it's evil, but I'm not interested in joining up.
If your friends and coworkers are widely scattered through several towns, so even if you post your location nobody's likely to be nearby, then it's really kinda pointless.
It seems like this would be a good candidate for a peer-to-peer implementation. Send the data directly to your friends' devices, without a central repository or way for other people to check.
Of course, then you probably lose many of the marketing possibilities.
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I don't believe it's just generational, but culture plays an important role in it. If a person's friends are over-sharers, chances are they themselves might be, too. Personally, I never saw the advantage of location sharing. I like to know what my friends are up to and I like telling them what I'm doing, and there are many tools and sites for doing that. Why do people have to give their geo coordinates to some creepy…
Why do people have to give their geo coordinates to some creepy service when they could just post "hey, i'm at pizza hut, everybody" on Twitter if the need arises? Because there is more than one Pizza Hut?
The weirdest thing I had happen so far was checking in (on Gowalla) at a restaurant while on vacation and seeing a checkin from the same guy that had also recently checked into our hotel. For a minute I thought it was a weird coincidence, but then I looked at all his recent checkins and he'd been checking into every single spot up and down the beach, about 30 in the past hour. The weird part is that he was actually i…
I almost said something to him about being an item-hunting scammer, but I let it go. It's weird how accustomed we've become to anonymity in modern times. What's really weird is how emotional people get about how other people spend their time. "Scammer" because he's been to 30 restaurants? Who the fuck cares!?
I was just commenting that it was weird to actually see a guy that does hundreds of driveby automated checkins a day actually inside the place he checked into.