Who hates FourSquare?
Apparently everyone who doesn't use it.
A good friend of mine who follows me on Twitter and Facebook suddenly says, "I think I'm going to stop following you." So say, "What? Why?" And she says, "I'm so sick of those FourSquare updates. I could care less. They are annoying. No one wants to know you're 'mayor' of your church." And then Edward says, "Tell me about it. Its even more annoying when you're with her and she's checking in every 5 minutes."
Of course I immediately defended myself saying, "I use it to let clients and other tech people know where I am. Or to connect with people in the same place. Or to find out more about a particular area of town."
But they both just rolled their eyes at me. And then it occurred to me, before I started using FourSquare, I hated it too. I would see all these updates from FourSquare on Facebook and I'd be like, "Who care?" Until I got in on the fun. Then I forget about how irritating it was.
Of course the more I thought about this, the more I realized its true of almost all social media. If you don't use it, you HATE it. People who aren't on (or want to be on) Twitter can't stand that other people use it. They say its stupid and pointless. Same with Facebook. Non-facebook users feel that Facebook is a waste of time. Before that it was IMing, or web-surfing.
I'm not saying the FourSquare isn't just a little bit silly. I'm not saying it will last forever. But I will say, to the people who don't use it: don't knock it til you try it.
And to the people who do use it: if someone just doesn't "get it" don't worry. They'll either catch on or just be grumpy and neither effects you. If you lose a follower or two, you might want to re-evaluate, but I say so what? If you know them in real life, connect there. If you know them online and a FourSquare update offends them, forget about 'em. Be yourself online! (Even if that person is a trend-obsessing, constantly-updating, tech nerd, like me.)
Tags: check-in, constant, Facebook, FourSquare, hate social media, mayor, Social Media, Twitter, updates, who uses
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:18 pm
I’d agree it’s a little silly. I’d also agree with the view point of people not on it are rather annoyed by seeing it etc etc. I’d like to say though 4sq and whirrl and the rest all need to mature a little bit more.
We are in the infancy of how we see location in a virtual mobile space. While 4sq is fun it doesn’t give me more information all the time. What about media. We’re constantly twitpic-ing and twit-videoing and YouTube-ing and more out there.
Why can’t i see that stuff when I check in? Links in tips are good but again with how our mobile devices work that means leaving one app to go to another. Does it seem bad that I want it all in one space? Does it seem bad that I would like to see a little more richness in seeing the layers of the location that we can’t get from being there and knowing there was an impromptu game of chess, or a flash mob we all just missed?
I say all this as being a former 4sq user. I must say though I’m not done using the different ones yet, Whirrl, MyTown, BrightKite (which checks you in to all of the others at the same time) and a few others I have not found nor can talk about yet.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Jax,
I gotta agree. 4sq and really any of the others are just not there yet. I for one want to be able to attach image to locations, see all the reviews instantaneously and know whether they actually interact with people who check-in and where I can connect to them on other social media. In fact that’s why I still say that the biggest trend in social media is the location based ones. Why? Because they have so much more to offer that hasn’t been tapped yet. The platform who gets that first will be the one who wins.
-Kat