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#1. You'd be surprised how inaccurate the iPhone GPS can be when you first fire up the app. In NYC, its not uncommon for the first "fix" you get to be 5-10 blocks away (and of course the accuracy improves after 5, 10, 15 seconds...) When we were restricting checkins by GPS, we were forcing the user to wait for sometimes up to 20 seconds to get a good enough fix and it just felt like a lousy user experience. (no doubt this gets better in the future, but this is using 2.5 & 3G iPhones). The better alternative was to trust the user to accurately report their location.
#2. Users *love* the pre-checkins. (This was a big "feature" within dodgeball too.) Users don't just want to check-in when they arrive at a place, they want to check-in on the walk or the cab ride over. I did this last night in my cab from Times Square -> downtown (and also added a "see you in 10 mins!" shout). We have people that check in as they're leaving work and we have people that check-in when they're on the way home (because they forgot to check-in while they were there). Restricting via GPS would prevent both of these scenarios.
I get the whole "cheater" argument - and sure this is a problem on foursquare - but I think there are better ways to fix it. Right now, we have a small number of people in some cities that are clearly gaming the system (checking in too often from places that are physically too far away from one another). We can write rules that prevent people from making these checkins in the first place, but those rules would also penalize the pre-checkin'ers, etc.
Instead, we're quietly flagging people we think are "misusing" the service based on frequency and geography. We're basically doing the same thing Gowalla is doing - calculating how far someone is from the place they say they're at - but instead of preventing the checkin at all, we just flag it as "mischevious".
Eventually, we'll algorithmically use these flags to figure out who are cheaters are and then start to prevent them from earning rewards, becoming mayors, dominating the leaderboard etc. This is a pretty hard problem to solve (which is we haven't fixed it yet) but we're definitely taking the time to make sure we get it right. The last thing we want to do is call our users "cheaters" when they're not.
- @dens
co-founder, foursquare
- foursquare assumes people's intentions are all good
- Gowalla assumes people's intentions are bad
The difference is being forced to prove your innocence (Gowalla) or being assumed innocent until proven otherwise (foursquare).
This has nothing to do with 4SQ assuming the best in its users, and gowalla presuming the worst.
Did you happen to catch Josh Williams' (Gowalla) response below?
But in the specific instance you cite, that is, being able to check in to the Ritz (something I will never be able to do for real, BTW!) from your home, and then to go on and claim mayorship, I think that is a strike AGAINST foursquare.
Let's look at the usage cases for these location-based apps. Your argument primarily addresses your connection with your friends, and the benefit each service provides to those connections. You point out that your friends will know that, when you're checked in to the Ritz, you're really at home. You further point out that this "fuzziness" can be exploited to add a level of anonymity to an inherently UN-anonymous endeavor. That's all well and good, and I'd be hard pressed to disagree.
However, the angle foursquare is pushing (and, it seems, gowalla might be coming around to), is the business-to-consumer angle. And there, your "gaming of the system" is a strike against it. YOU know you're not really at the Ritz when you check in from your house, and so do your friends. But the guy you stole the mayorship from? He might know too. And he might sour on the game because he lost the bennies of mayorship to a guy that lives down the street from the spot, and never really goes there. How's that gonna work in NYC with folks checking in to the corner bar every day after dinner?
And the Ritz? What do they get out of partnering with foursquare, if their mayor is going to be a guy that never sets foot in the place? In your comments below, you talk about how businesses will be disinclined to game the system, and you're right. The customers, on the other hand? Strong incentive to cheat. I follow foursquare on twitter, and a regular theme is how hard they are working on anti-cheating code. Gowalla has that code baked in, in the form of GPS.
As for adding locations, I don't know that I agree, but again, I can't say for sure, as I don't have access to foursquare yet. I CAN say, though, that my neck of the woods has 80-100 gowalla spots already. At least half of those created in the last week. Total foursquare spots? Zero.
Again, I'm in no position to judge the two, as I can only stare at the foursquare screen that tells me I'm not in a supported location. I look forward to trying it out for real, and comparing the two services at that point.
As a postscript, I've also thought a lot about how these services can reconcile a need for privacy with the very public nature of the game. In gowalla's case, I'd like to see them create "private spots" that can only be seen by your friends. That is, the "Matt's House" spot wouldn't show up on any searches on the site or the mobile client, and wouldn't be something the public could check in to. Only my friends could see it, and see when I'm checked in to it.
and I know from personal experience that you bring a lot of business to the Ritz - inviting people both in small groups (and occasionally very large groups) to get together there...
First, I still stand by the fact that being forced to be at the location to check in is a good thing - because it means businesses and individuals can't 'game' the entire system.
Second, what I do hope however is that Gowalla will offer a "privacy" option that hides your location from some or all of your "friends"...or maybe even provide a "delayed" option that only shows the world your location some time after you've been there.
Regarding being able to check in from home, I personally would never want people to know when I'm home or not. I'll put money on it that most non-geeks would be in the same boat.
Finally, thank you ever so much for naming me one of your favorite tech writers. Considering your tech pedigree, it's a genuine honour.
As to gaming. This IS a game. So, gaming is a plus, I think. Just like gaming Twitter is a plus. :-)
Really, there's no real reward to gaming these systems and businesses will soon learn that gaming them is going to mark them as really lame. Here's why: I know who lives in my area and who frequents businesses. I know @hardaway, who is the current mayor of Peets. If some Peets employee is the mayor I'll learn that and think really badly of that business.
I will meet the mayors of my favorite places. That's part of the fun of these systems. If you are gaming you will get found out and reviled.
Why bother participating in a competition that anybody can trivially rig against you?
The purpose of a geolocation-based game is to, you know, actually GO to that location. I mean, that's the actual fun part, going there. If you don't have to go to the location to play the game, then there's no point to playing the game in the first place.
And no business in it's right mind is going to offer any sort of benefits based on a game that can be so trivially and easily "hacked".
FourSquare fail. Gowalla win.
Perhaps the gaming of Foursquare and similar services will be more rewarding once more businesses enter into promotional deals with Foursquare. If one can use shenanigans to score a free dinner, there are more incentives to do so.
One of the biggest reasons it's an "anti-feature"? There's no opt-out.
Until someone has been stalked by a psychopath? You can't really understand why there are those of us who absolutely hate to use an app that *forces* you to disclose your exact location.
Heck, most "normal" people freak out when they see the aerial view from Google Maps (also helpful to stalkers) - forced disclosure = dangerous for personal safety.
*It's a location app*. The thing is explicitly designed to show your location to your friends. That's the whole purpose of it.
I mean, saying that you can't opt-out of showing your location is like saying that you can't opt-out of sending your emails to people when you use the Mail app. That's what it's *designed to do*.
The "opt-out" is to either a) not use it or b) not have any friends on it. Simple, eh?
I do have one question for you though, regarding your first point above:
Why do you lie to your readers and tell them you could not check in at Sequoia Hospital with Gowalla when this is clearly not true?
In fact, you created the Sequoia Hospital spot on our service. Was this a simple oversight, bending the truth or a white lie? Is this blog a game like Foursquare where checkins can be fudged?
http://gowalla.com/spots/25856
Just play it straight.
Well played.
I think this post alone sums up the difference between Gowalla and foursquare. Not even interested in checking Gowalla out again now. Thanks, Josh.
Robert was clearly offering constructive comments, not starting any flame wars.
Is being childish prerequisite to developing augmented reality games? I hope not...
Foursquare has had bugs with adding new locations (it frequently crashes on me when I try to do so) but this fuzziness allows for users to add locations that would never be possible on Gowalla - for example there are Foursquare locations for many of the Muni lines here in SF (I was briefly the mayor of the J-Church line...)
As Foursquare adds more businesses via formal relationships (I think they should give businesses a way to view foursquare activity & trends for their business as well as buy the ability to offer special offers based on certain behaviors - i.e. on first check-in, every 5 check-ins, for the mayor etc) I think the fun & utility of using Foursquare will only keep growing.
I think the twitter integration has some minor issues (I don't use it but appreciate that my friends do but wish the messages were a bit more clearly from FourSquare)
Good points made, though.
Ed
And like you, I don't want the exact address of my home known.
And tonight I became the Mayor of Gilbert City Hall. Another plus:-) Foursquare is one of those apps that I both love and think is lame simultaneously.
Yes, using my 2006-era first-generation Motorola Q, I surfed to m.gowalla.com.
Needless to say, this didn't work...
Contrast Gowalla's limitations with the lack of limitations on Foursquare. Foursquare works on my "8 bit rotary phone," and would even work if I had a not-so-smart phone with SMS capabilities.
It's VHS vs. Beta all over again. Beta was superior, but VHS had the larger user base. Guess who won?
I think with a balanced privacy system these location based services would be appealing to people. However even with that in place there are still holes that may be exploited.
Either way - using GPS on my phone = dead battery really quickly, so I wouldn't even bother with GPS apps. Plus since I use WinMo I automatically qualify for exclusion ;)
I can play with Gowalla right away BECAUSE of the GPS function. As for privacy issues, everybody has to be as enlightened about this as he can...
As for both services, just like monopolycitystreets I fear that the most fun is in the "landgrab" and once all places around you are claimed, the glossy point will come off.
Would be interesting to get your view.
www.buddycloud.com
-Anybody can actually play Gowalla.
-Most people cannot play FourSquare because they don't support their city.
Gowalla wins.
But, to your point about freaking people out. I get the same reaction from everybody in my family. I even invited a bunch of them onto Latitude (many have iPhones, so they're not scared of all things tech) and not one accepted, my own family! :-).
So, yes, absolutely a killer (in a bad way) feature to require GPS.
Robert's unusal (and a bit odd) case, where he doesn't actually check in where is, and instead relies on insider knowledge amongst his friends to divine his actual location, isn't really that useful on a large scale (imagine if ALL your 4SQ friends used that method), and I suspect doesn't happen that often.
How am I updating FireEagle? Simple: I have an iPhone app on my iPod touch which uses the wi-fi-based location services to figure out where I am. I've got a script on my Linux box which keeps an eye on where I am logging in from (over SSH) and tells FireEagle about them based on the IP address: it's loaded up with all the free wifi spots I use around London. I'm also going to start detecting where I am based on what devices are connected to the local subnet on my network at home - if my laptop or iPod touch are connected, I'm at home. You know what? I'm getting pretty damn precise geolocation even though none of the devices I use have any GPS in them at all.
If you are going to build a location-based service, make it so I can check in using any damn method I want to. Because I can come up with more accurate ways to tell you where I am than you can ever imagine. I really want to be able to update my Google Latitude this way: if Google ever open up an API, I'll just write a bridge script to automatically push my FireEagle location into Latitude.
Overall, I'm thinking this (like Foursquare) is great if I can keep everything private only to my friends (which I don't know that I can). Sharing locations and places to go and things to do with friends is cool but not the whole world. I think the privacy option is a very important feature.
As far as Gowalla's feature/anti-feature ... I agree, choosing from nearby locations works out best. No need to record or share my GPS co-ordinates in most situations.
Gowalla, for me, is just a way of having fun when I travel around. I have no issues with the 'anti-feature' of GPS. I like visiting spots that other people have created, and picking up stamps and items. The social aspect is also a bonus - I've made some good friends through Gowalla that I wouldn't otherwise have met.
Gowalla is, after all, an iPhone app that you can try out for free. You might like it, you might not. If you have concerns about it, then don't download it.
Thank. You.