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.)