Foursquare is extremely potent.
And Foursquare is seriously creepy.
Let's focus on the creepy. Take that one: A women checks-in at some restaurant - and some random stalker who read the tweet calls her up at the restaurant and says that "they should hang out".
"How I became a Foursquare cyberstalker" is a must-read: a journalist hunts down a Foursquare user.
And that was amateur stuff. This is what happens when a coder fucks with Foursquare: he harvest 875,000 check-ins in one city in the space of 3 weeks.
Then there was Please Rob Me, which aggregated 4sq and Gowalla check-ins and broadcasted a list of people who were, well, not at home. (they've removed the stream, unfortunately).
I seldom use Foursquare - but I plan on reconsidering my use.
But you can still use it to play with, because, fun fact: Foursquare can be easily cheated. Consider, if you may, those three tweets of mine where I checked in, 2 or 3 minutes apart, in Egypt, then in Massachusetts, then finally in Moscow [at the Kremlin, yeah, it's the only place I could think of.].
I think from now on, teleporting myself is probably going to be the only way I use Foursquare.
(or I can play at overthrowing Embee from the mayorship of the dozen places she rules over, and I won't even have to physically be there).
Come to think of it, I could be gaming the special offers that companies offer (looking at my foursquare page, which currently places me in Boston (hey, wasn't I just in Russia?), I am told that a sushi place offers 10% off if you check-in, a grocery store offers a reusable ecofriendly bag on the first check-in, and even a free coffee and tea every time I (hypothetically) check-in!
There are no businesses offering Foursquare freebies in Egypt, however, but it's only a matter of time.
I'll be waiting.
Let's focus on the creepy. Take that one: A women checks-in at some restaurant - and some random stalker who read the tweet calls her up at the restaurant and says that "they should hang out".
"How I became a Foursquare cyberstalker" is a must-read: a journalist hunts down a Foursquare user.
And that was amateur stuff. This is what happens when a coder fucks with Foursquare: he harvest 875,000 check-ins in one city in the space of 3 weeks.
Then there was Please Rob Me, which aggregated 4sq and Gowalla check-ins and broadcasted a list of people who were, well, not at home. (they've removed the stream, unfortunately).
I seldom use Foursquare - but I plan on reconsidering my use.
But you can still use it to play with, because, fun fact: Foursquare can be easily cheated. Consider, if you may, those three tweets of mine where I checked in, 2 or 3 minutes apart, in Egypt, then in Massachusetts, then finally in Moscow [at the Kremlin, yeah, it's the only place I could think of.].
I think from now on, teleporting myself is probably going to be the only way I use Foursquare.
(or I can play at overthrowing Embee from the mayorship of the dozen places she rules over, and I won't even have to physically be there).
Come to think of it, I could be gaming the special offers that companies offer (looking at my foursquare page, which currently places me in Boston (hey, wasn't I just in Russia?), I am told that a sushi place offers 10% off if you check-in, a grocery store offers a reusable ecofriendly bag on the first check-in, and even a free coffee and tea every time I (hypothetically) check-in!There are no businesses offering Foursquare freebies in Egypt, however, but it's only a matter of time.
I'll be waiting.
8 comments:
That is both hilarious and freaky!!
But then again, being stalked is 'somehow' the user's fault.. (I got that feeling reading about that poor woman who was stalked). Having an all Public account, knowing that ANYONE can see, and use your public information, with your real picture (and phone number sometimes!) displayed in your profile, using many details of your real life.. All of that can cause you trouble!
Minimize the info you display publicly as much as you can, connect only to people you already know instead of being that open to everyone (that goes most of all for geo-location apps.)
This is what you can do to minimize the danger.. The risk is still high, and the deeper technology goes in our lives the higher the risk becomes, but.. Well, no pain no gain, right?
God! I sound like a classroom teacher!!!!
Ah yes. 4sq. Sigh.
The problem with Foursquare, Gowalla, etc. is that we all at a sudden found a new technology in our hands - mobile phones and GPS - and we couldn't resist the temptation of toying with this new technology.
As you said, the is the risk of sharing your location with others, there is also the problem of checkin in anywhere you want without any kind of authentication to make sure you are really there.
You know what, I guess 4sq is aware of the vulnerability of their system to people checking in locations they aren't really in, but I guess they do not pay much attention to solving this problem as they know that many people are afraid to revel their location and this is the only way of forcing people to checkin more. Also as I said, it's still a new and not mature enough technology, and no one knows how it will look like in the future.
I guess 4sq and gowalla are just early adopters, and may be in the future there will be a totally different use of this technology. People are now thinking of targeted ads, yelp-ish services, etc. Just bear with them and give them some time and may be then the location based service will be better than they are now.
NG
It is indeed hilarious and freaky. :)
I was in a seminar earlier this year and i remember a speaker saying that "before, things were private until they were made public; but today things are public until they are made private".
The problem, as you point out, is that people don't really know how to control their public info.. and websites have the interest of displaying the maximum amount of information for the applications that Tarek just mentioned above.
KJ
Yep, 4sq. You a user? :-)
Tarek
I agree that we - users and companies - still don't quite know what to do exactly with GPS and geolocation. But we know there's a lot of potential there (and I might write a small post on that).
I don't know how things will evolve though, leaving this to experts such as yourself! but until then, I'll watching from afar. Never get version 1.0 of anything in life, just wait until they debug it. :)
Salams
2 things about foursquare:
1. I am a big fan of the "plausible deniability" fake check-in. When I am out of town I either don't check in at all, or randomly check in at my house (cunningly named, d'ailleurs). Knowing how to use it takes out some of the creepy stalker-please-rob-me aspects of it.
2. A friend of mine wrote a decent post (which I disagree with in certain points) where he was pretty critical of foursquare (http://t37.net/foursquare-est-il-deji-mort-ou-le-triste-monde-tragique-des-services-sociaux-qui-ne-servent-i-rien.html) but for me, I think social networks are only as good as their ecosystem. Foursquare isn't used much in lausanne, but we won't see the offers and location-based services without growing the ecosystem a little bit.
cncx
Welcome to the blog :)
Like the plausible deniability concept. I should try it. On an international level.
"What do you mean, I didn't come to your birthday party in Warsaw? I 4sq-checked-in at the bar we were at!"
But then again - doesn't that kill the purpose of 4sq? Because, the question i have no answer for yet:
WHY do we check-in in 4sq?
2. This question meets your friend's article [sur la finalité de Foursquare]. I don't know whether anyone really goes up to say hi to the people he happens to 'meet' in the same location on 4sq.
But does that mean that we haven't reached the critical mass yet? The question, in my opinion, is whether 4sq is going to survive until we reach this critical mass.
Oops, I used the wrong login and just saw after tweet that there was a response, so no deleting (hey, going real-name on the internet is so avant garde!)
One thing I find interesting about 4sq is that in some cities, the critical mass has been hit, which means it has been able to evolve into something more than just random check ins and heated mayoral races (although I have met some people in town because we happen to check into the same places, so it happens...which may have more to do with the Swiss community tho)- that is where the whole discounts for checkins and stuff comes in.
The good question is does the relative success in some cities (like SF, New York...) justify keeping the platform worldwide? Like who is going to do a check-in in Sachs Harbour or something?
C,
So what's the trick? Small enough community of users? (there are a few people I repeatedly see in the Egyptian/Lebanese 4squarophere, for instance) Large enough base of users (San Francisco?)
I wonder if it should indeed be kept global. Huh. good question. That could probably be an entire article on its own. Want to guest write this? :)
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