Getting back from the winter break, I had heard quite a bit about a social media game called Foursqaure. I had seen some activity from the game in my Twitter feed toward the end of 2009. But just as I returned from vacation, I spotted this on Mashable, so thinking if it is good for Harvard, it might have something good for the U of A or the Faculty of Science as well. But in order to determine that, I would have to get my hands, well fingers, dirty and play the game to see what is so compelling or interesting.
First the compelling part. If you are part of an organization, Foursquare provides and amazing means to track and examine what your target group/employees/students are up to. You can reward certain behaviours and perhaps identify problematic ones. It could potentially help get new students/members oriented to a new location and it could help provide tips and referrals for both old and new members find out more about their area. So for a large campus, like Harvard, or like the U of A, this seems to be a no brainer as a tool for recruitment, engagement or orientation.
But what about the negative? Well, you don’t have to try that hard to find someone with something negative to say about these geolocation games. The first and most important, is that you are giving away your location, and lack of same (RWW). You are continually spewing into your social media stream details that are just not needed (emoderation). It is also completely honor based, so you don’t really have to be at a location to say that you are checking in, you just need to be honest about it. So between the noise and the lack of transparency, Foursquare as a tool to be used by organizations seems to be problematic. Even though there are merchants who are keen to give mayors discounts, it is very easy to spoof that information.
So what is my take after “playing the game for a month”? Well, it is an interesting experiment, but like the Facebook games (Farmville, etc), they generate noise that erode, or potentially erode the systems that one would use to maintain one’s network. Using the basic update paradigm, one can likely do much more to get relevant information to their friends. Organizations can use existing tools like groups and hashtags to organize and orient.
I’ve heard it many times online that the wonderful thing about Social Media is that it is changing all the time, so nobody can really be an expert. But having said that, we seem to collectively know what does and doesn’t work in that stream – and it is different for different groups. For the groups that I deal with, I don’t think games like Foursquare fit very well. So, much to the pleasure of some of my friends, you may have seen my last location update from that system (next is Buzz). Officially however, I’m retiring from Foursquare politics, the mayoral duties I have are crushing my home life.
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