6 Reasons I’m down on Foursquare

by jeffhilimire on February 5, 2010

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I’ve been using foursquare for around six months (I think) and honestly, I’m starting to get a little tired of it. Or rather, the shiny newness of “checking in” has started to wear off.

Why?

1. I just simply don’t go out enough. I have 3 kids at home 5 and under. Which means on nights and weekends I’m not going to many places so I’m restricted to what I do during the work day, which isn’t much. So it gets kind of boring checking in to the same places every day, for basically no reason.

2. I don’t care about the points system. Mayorship is fun and badges are fun, but I don’t care about the leaderboard for some reason. All that means to me is who goes out the most and guess what, I’m not going to suddenly start going out more than the people above me in the list. So there’s really nothing I can do to improve my ranking there.

3. I’ve almost maxed out my badges because of #1. I recently got the “Bender Badge” only because I was at an airport at 5am and Foursquare thought I had been out past 3am :) Otherwise, I’m pretty much badged out.

4. I can’t beat certain people out of mayorship. There are a few places I go enough to possibly be the mayor, but unfortunately those places have other folks that go more than me and there’s pretty much no way I’ll ever beat them. So I have to rely on going to places that no one else goes so I can become mayor, which is pretty lame. For instance, @jmart730 owns the local Chick-fil-A and @darren_kennedy owns the Seattle’s Best. And personally they both run corrupt offices and rely on smear campaigns. Just sayin.

5. I’m starting to like MyTown a lot more because my success in that app isn’t tied to my friends as much as its tied to my decisions. I’m excited to see how they role out the social aspects of it in the next few months, but as far as game play its more fun for me right now. And I don’t think there’s room in my life for more than one check in system, otherwise I look a lot like this.

6. I’m a little tired of all the people tying their Foursquare accounts directly to their Twitter accounts so I see everyplace they go. For a few folks I don’t mind it but for most it clogs up my Twitter stream and that makes me resent Foursquare a little (not their fault obviously).

I’m still interested in check in applications and think there’s a future there, but waiting to see what the end game is.

Oh and I have to plug the new comic by status:THIS on Facebook entering this arena…

If you’re still digging Foursquare, love to know if I’m off the mark on any of the above points.

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Tagged as: check-in, foursquare, mytown

  • jonathankarron
    I think FourSquare is the best of the bunch from what I've tested but we'll see how sustainable it is. If more restaurants, coffee shops, etc. really use it to drive frequency with discounts, meet ups, etc. it could continue to grow. Otherwise, it may just have appeal to a smaller, outgoing group.
  • I'm in the same boat as you, Jeff; I feel too old to get much out of Foursquare. And I think that really raises a question about their potential growth. Facebook started out being only for college students, but it was fairly easy for them to transition to a wider audience. It's hard to see Foursquare achieving that level of scale when the product, by its very nature, excludes such a large (and demographically valuable) group.

    Maybe it will evolve into something different and become more useful for us homebodies. But in its current incarnation, it's hard to see that happening.
  • That's a great comparison Greg. I'm struggling with being "down" on Foursquare because I love the service and the idea of location-based apps/games/whatever is going to be a big part of our digital marketing future. I just struggle with the entertainment or engagement value if I barely go out and therefore can't compete. It's still nice knowing where my friends are but that will just move me toward being a lurker vs. participator.
  • Ha! Did someone say "useful for us homebodies"? (Why yes, that was me.) Check out Miso: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/miso_a_fou...

    Still not sure I see the appeal, but I like that someone at least recognizes the importance of appealing beyond a certain demographic.
  • Just saw this article on TechCrunch, where Foursquare is now doing over 1 million check-ins in a week. Looks like they are hitting a big growth spurt, similar to what we saw with Twitter. http://ow.ly/14CIz
  • steveswanson
    I'll do My town this weekend and let you know. Beth N HATES my updates, so your right!
  • Well you know I like YOUR updates :)
  • If you want a more game environment, MyTown is definitely the answer. I got to max points on there and was ecstatic to delete it. Fun to play but served no purpose for me and consumed my time courtesy of some good competitive nature. Haha.

    I use FourSquare primarily for seeing where others are checking in and often find out about new restaurants, etc because of it, regardless of whether I am actually checking in myself. The only times I've gotten a new badge in the past six months has been while traveling. Have you seen the newly available badges since they merged the cities together into the open location model?

    Also, maybe you're not the target user. You are busy with other things in life that doesn't enable as active of a social or even mobile life on a regular basis and might not need the features that some of these services offer.
  • It's possible I'm not the target user, you're definitely correct. The question I'd ask then is, do these check in apps actually stop being useful once people "settle down" and get married and/or have kids? Is there an extension for that demographic?
  • Just because you choose to get married and have kids you lose your social life? That's completely up to the individuals. Does every tool have to have use across many demographics or can it be highly targeted towards an active urban lifestyle?

    (Also, do all of your dis.qus comments publish to Twitter?)
  • Nope, you don't lose your social life if you have kids and get married, but, my guess is you go to less places than you do before that happens (gotta find sitters for example). I don't know many people with kids that could compete with single people for frequency of places visited. That's the main point, Foursquare stops being as fun when you can't get more badges or get mayorships. So I think Foursquare has to adapt or something, otherwise people will move to that point in their life where its less engaging as it used to be.

    re: Dis.qus, I tweet most of my dis.qus comments so that other people can join the comments/conversation. Many times people see a comment I tweeted and then jump back into the conversation.
  • barkerja
    Your points here are all similar to how I feel about Foursquare, and even Gowalla. They have a cool factor which everyone flocks to. For reasons unknown to me people seem to attract to services that have a gaming aspect -- people love competition.

    However, what I've found with Foursquare and other similar services is they don't have a level of sustainability. They're not socially engaging and that's what retains users, it plays a role in "re-playability".

    I'm not sure if you've ever used Brightkite but I believe they're a perfect example of how to properly engage a user socially based around location. They seem to have fallen under the radar because they don't have any "cool factors" that draw in the mass public; like I mentioned above everyone levitates towards the "game".

    If Brightkite added a similar gaming model on top of their existing setup I think they'd begin to take a large chunk of the location based market.
  • You know what, busted, I never really tried Brightkite. I'm going to start playing with it to see what's up with it because you're not the first person to tell me its a great app.

    Thanks!
  • Brightkite used to be very useful but the key to any social app is that there has to be active participation to provide value for the user to engage or even open. The audience has just left. Those who continue to use Brightkite either do so because of it's completely awesome SMS check-in ability, lack of caring about FourSquare/Gowalla/MyTown/insert-app-of-the-week, or because their connections they're interested in engaging with have left or only sporadically update.
  • barkerja
    Tessa I partially agree with you. Foursquare is still a one-man show. You don't really "participate" because there is no level of social'ness. You checkin, send a shout if you so desire and that's it.

    You have to rely on Twitter or other means to communicate with a user which is a terrible user experience imho.

    I really think Foursquare would benefit by adding the ability to comment on checkins and even allow photo posts. At least to me, it would make it a lot more useful. I could care less about becoming the mayor of my local 7-Eleven, but I do care about asking my friend what's going on at the bar he just checked into.

    Don't get me started about feeding such things to Twitter -- that place is already too noisy as it is, to the point to where I deleted Twitter.
  • barkerja
    I have a great community of friends that are very active. It's fun. And best of all, it can feed to all your other social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr) and not just feed useless checkins but useful data (photos, notes).

    Also, it helps that I live in San Francisco that thrives on these sorts of sites, however when I go back home (eastern KY) I'm the only person that's active. :)

    But yes Jeff, should definitely give it a shot, it's addicting. And their mobile applications are nice as well.
  • Agreed, I actually like Whrrl the best but no one uses it so I couldn't sustain.
  • meganhickey
    It took you 6 months to get bored? I've been on it 3 weeks and I'm bored. However, I got a renewed interest this morning when I became mayor of the Controlled Chaos room. Yay me! However, Danny Davis is planning a coup d'état.
  • Josh Martin
    Sounds like someone has mayor-envy....
  • Bah.
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