I’ll probably go to hell for this (or whichever purgatory your faith system threatens the gullible with). In a fit of curiosity, I joined FourSquare late last week.
So what’s it all about?
The idea is you “check in” with places you regularly visit on your mobile, and the wizard behind the curtains keeps track of where you have been. The clever bit comes when the places you are visiting use the information.
Example - say you visit Starbucks every day… what if Starbucks can verify that, and give you a free drink now and again? Even your local independent coffee shop can use the system to run their own loyalty scheme for free.
FourSquare have been playing the viral game to encourage take-up of the app. If you are the most common recent visitor to a venue, you become the “Mayor” of that place - and everybody else who checks in sees that. You also win all manner of badges for “achievements”. Some of them are pretty funny - you can tell the parents because they have a slide badge for visiting playparks. There are also badges for going to either many bars in the same night, or just going out several nights in a row… you get the idea.
The issue many will have with FourSquare is the loss of privacy. It’s a huge subject, and not one I’m going to explore here - suffice to say that if you’re a member of Facebook, you already lost everything you’ve ever posted there… Privacy doesn’t really exist on the internet any more - get used to it.