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city info...could be done in a very short amount of time worldwide
Twitter was open for the whole world from it's early days. Foursquare is limited to some cities ... @ me when square space adds more cities please :/
But for what I read, seems to be a great product, would love to be able to use it in France ;)
http://creative360.com/blog/2009/09/why-i-quit-...
- Re: Foursquare is about showing off..."and that's not why I go to new places" - well no, presumably Foursquare is more a *result* of your social activity, not the primary motivator of it.
- Re "I don’t want to make friends through competition" - I haven't actually seen Foursquare as a way to make friends - yet. Currently it's true, the only way to really "meet" someone via Foursquare you don't already know is via mayor oustings, and I agree that's not the best icebreaker. But they just added a feature to see who else is checked in, this and more features like it will be the start of the true social discovery part of Foursquare, not just the current "see and compete with my friends" aspect.
It seems to me that the potential for Something Bad to happen is a little higher for women, so a bit of extra caution when it comes to location sharing seems wise. It's possible I'm being too cautious and missing out on the fun, though -- I've been tempted to sign up for Foursquare and may yet do so in the future if I feel safe enough.
I'll think about it some more.
All in all, I mostly agree with you, except I'm not sure it will be bigger. It has some definite downsides, like people cheating to compete for mayorship, or employees checking in every day thereby thwarting mayorship from consumers, but otherwise it is gold.
And by they way, congratulations in advance for your brand new little scoble :)
One of my concerns with various location services is that I don't necessarily want to reveal where I am all the time - not necessarily because of the adult establishment factor, but just because I want to draw somewhat of a line between my online persona and my IRL persona. Thus, I'd be willing to disclose that I'm at Oracle OpenWorld, but I might not want to disclose which 7 Elevens I frequent.
You're inspired me, however, to play around with Foursquare and see what I think. Hopefully I won't run into a Fail Square.
1) Your friends are mutually agreed (unlike Twitter, more like Facebook)
2) You can choose to check in or not check in wherever you like
3) When you check in, you can choose not to disclose where to your friends
4) You're generally not checking in to places like 7 Eleven anyway :-)
Let me know if you have any other questions, would be happy to discuss further.
Right now there are 4 ways to check-in:
* Check-in using our hot hot hot iPhone app! [download here]
* Check-in using our even hotter Android app! [learn more]
* Check-in on your mobile browser at: http://m.foursquare.com (bookmark it!)
* Check-in by texting 50500 (like this: @ Ace Bar ! Playing skeeball)
Twitter is universal; if you have a cellphone/smartphone/computer, you can use Twitter, or at least try it out.
I can't even try Foursquare out unless I catch a flight to, say, Chicago.
I think Foursquare's biggest mistake at this point is limiting the number of cities available, as opposed to allowing users to mark new locations.
Sure, it may be a big hit in Half Moon Bay, but there are about six billion people who can't use the service at this point. That's not a good way to launch a service/app like Foursquare.
*Anyone* can use Twitter. Only the cities that Foursquare has set up can use Foursquare.
FS has one advantage vs Twitter: it's a game, which means it might end-up attracting the younger audience that Twitter is still missing. It has also a business model almost ready (have retailers pay for their promos). But it needs to prepare for the next phase. Users tend to get tired of games after a while.
On the other hand, Twitter just launched its geo-location API-should have done it way earlier...given its mobile nature.
But the 800 pound gorilla in the room is Facebook, the moment it adds location to its mobile service, things might change radically. And it is getting there (see their deal with Nokia). It blows my mind to think it is already one of the biggest carrier worldwide (well except for countries like China).
The challenge I see however is the manpower that will be required to bring the small, local businesses online with FourSquare. Think of the local pub that does a banner business. How is FourSquare going to reach out to them? Are they going to call them? Are they going to rely on users to evangelize the service? If they can crack that nut by either targeting large chains first which may have a trickle down effect on to the local places or focusing their attention on the web development/marketing firms which build the sites for the locals they will roll.
Two Fun Things BTW:
1. Dennis Crowley (FourSquare founder) got a kick out of how my house was tagged when I first joined FourSquare: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/3769281398/
2. Jeff Cutler and I shared more of our thoughts on FourSquare on a recent episode of NomX3: http://nomx3.com/henriettas-kitchen-at-the-char...
Furthermore, the new functionality of seeing who else is around or who has checked in as great, but i think they need to install a way to ping someone who is not your friend but who is in the same bar or restaurant as you are. Or at least give the option. In a city like NYC, if someone is on foursquare and they are in the same restaurant as me, chances are one of us is likely to come over and say hey, have a drink and chat about how funny it all is, and ya never know...meet an important new business or personal contact.
But why might I take this stand? Because not only did people think Twitter was lame, but it was originally intended to do pretty much the same thing and people turned it into something else (and the peeps who still insist on using it that way I generally unfollow). Twitter itself morphed into something else because the original purpose didn't hold sufficient value for the 'masses'.
The concept has only been proven valuable as to 'presence' on phones (http://twurl.nl/gix2ib). Opt/in out? That's just a matter of simple experience design. Choice is a relevant design attribute.
Right from the off, Twitter allowed anyone to use their service, irrespective of their location - remember how mesmerised we were by Twittervision? Watching those realtime updates come in from all over the world woke people up to the impact that Twitter was about to have.
By limiting who can use their service, Foursquare has damaged their potential to make a huge splash. I'd predict that in 12 months, if Foursquare is still around, it will only be used by a small but hard core number of fans.
I'm working a lot on this stuff, and I think that projects like Foursquare are only scratching the surface.
Brightkite is doing what made Twitter successful, whereas Foursquare is a nice crayon drawing that we should hang on the refrigerator to make the founders feel special.
In reading the comments, it seems there are underlying assumptions about "big" and "success" in that they are essentially defined by a huge, international customer base. While I would not (publicly) say I think fourquare would out grow twitter in terms of user numbers, at this point, it is entriely possible it could surpass them in terms measurable ($) long-term user engagement and value to customers ( both the individuals who use it and the venues/merchants who are participating). I cannot wait to see the mayor/venue connections grow, for example...
As a woman I actually find foursquare far LESS creepy than twitter or facebook -I've had people I barely know comment on my facebook status (and since changed my privacy settings) but with fourquare it's very easy to moderate on a person-by-person basis. So, if my creepy neighbor were to sign up, I'd just know to moderate that... whereas on facebook and twitter making those tweaks feels more cumbersome.
a) Your telephone number has to be 10 digits long - OK for USA maybe but in uk numbers are 11
b) No country codes allowed - nope we don't ll live in the USA.
c) Drop down list of towns- are these guys jokers?
Note that twitter was world wide and yep it did crash a lot but at least you got to see glimpses of what it could be like