Too square for foursquare

I've been fashionably late to adopting most of the social media outlets. I was roped into Twitter. I reluctantly returned to Facebook.

But there's no chance in hell you'll ever see me on foursquare, a site that uses GPS and your smart phone to allow you to share your location, find your friends, and earn points and deals, in case you were wondering.

I imagine it was created for young hipster city dwelling types with lots of friends who might stumble into their favorite corner coffee shop in their holey, unlaced Chuck Taylors and fingerless gloves, order their chai latte, and then have a moment or 12 to check in to see if any of their other young hipster city dwelling types were near by so they could meet up and drink their chai lattes together.

And then because they go to that same corner coffee shop every day, they rack up points, and become "The Mayor," which affords them a complimentary almond biscotti with their next purchase.

HELLS YEAH!

But Joe Schmoe in East Bumblefuck USA telling people he's checked in at Jimmy Bob's BBQ Shack?

Or a suburban mom who goes to the same five boring places?

Probably not.

But that doesn't stop people like Joe S. or burby mom from using it. And even better, those people start checking in everywhere, with notifications sent directly to Twitter and Facebook telling me that they've just checked in at Target.

"You are the mayor of the Shell Station on 5th and Grant!"

Suh-weet!

I can barely get all my kids out of the car and safely into the store, let alone whip out my phone and check in to let everyone know this. And considering I have very few friends, chances are if they were at the store, I'd run into them.

But beyond annoying, I really wonder if it's safe. Do people really need to know where you are at all times? Is it smart to check into places where your kids are - like their school?

I'm just not sure it's worth the points, and badges, and fake government titles.

Besides, the only thing I'd be mayor of is my bathroom. And that just doesn't have a very nice ring to it.

Comments

[Sara B]

I'm apparently too square for Foursquare as well, I thought you were talking about a playground game I played in grade school... :)

[magpie]

Yeah. Apropos of your next post, I think I could be the Mayor of the Blue Striped Chair in My Daughter's Bedroom, because I'm there reading her a book every single night because one day she'll be a teenager who hates me. Other than that? Feh.

[That_danielle]

I will say this... I never liked MySpace. Back in 2003, I thought blogs were a total vanity. When my college-aged sisters-in-law were all over Facebook before they let everyone else have accounts, I thought it was stupid. And when I signed up for my twitter account 2.5 years ago, I didn't get it either but I used it occasionally and now lookit me!

[JennyBean]

I'm so square I didn't know there was a Foursquare.

[Kristen -- Motherhood Uncensored]

Julie --

I'm not sure it would motivate me that much, again because while I can get the competitive appeal, I don't have that much time for stuff like that. I could see where people would totally dig it.

And Whitney -- I've seen your updates. They're very smart. I've actually thought of using 4sqaure - like when I was on my book tour - but I was alone - and it wasn't when I was with my kids. Or at Target.

[Meagan @ The Happiest Mom]

I am so not cool enough for Foursquare. A few months ago I was in a local cafe in my small, relatively unhip little town with almost zero social media presence. Got home, checked my Twitter and saw "@MeaganFrancis is sitting at the table next to me but I'm too shy to say hello!"

ACCCKK! I was dressed in glorified pajamas and probably had food in my teeth. DO NOT WANT to be recognized (or worse, sought out) when out in public!

[Kristy]

You are scaring me. There are more of these types of things out there?! Oh boy. I still haven't even started twittering or whatever the hell it is called.

[RookieMom Whitney]

I use it. I think it's fun. I try not to annoy people with it. I was super embarassed when my mayorship of my burrito joint went to Twitter.

I only let my updates show on Twitter if I annotate it such as "date night" or "girly shopping time" because then it autofills the rest of the message for me with the name of the destination, making for a tweet as worthwhile as any other.

My foursquare friends are a subset of my Twitter "friends" because I'm only interested in where you are specifically if it's near me geographically. It's fun to see that my real-life BFF went to Target 30 minutes before I did. But of course, I realize Twitter doesn't give a crap about a Target run, so I limit it to 4square.

[julie @ Mommy Said What?]

Foursquare is missing a piece of the puzzle, which makes it very uninteresting. But it plays on people's enjoyment of play - that's the important part. Soon, we'll see a gaming layer over everything. It already exists (think air miles, reward cards, frequent shopper points, etc.), it just hasn't been leveraged properly.

What if you could exchange your "points" for groceries, or credit on your taxes? What if you were rewarded with a free coffee every day for being the mayor of your Starbucks? Does that make it more interesting?

[Cloud]

As someone who had a guy I knew go a bit stalker-like in college... No way I'd ever be on Foursquare (or, I guess it is more accurate to say that no way I'd ever publish updates to the general public). I won't even mention ahead of time on my blog if I'm going out of town- and it is not linked to my real name.

What this really does is scare the crap out of me for when my girls get older and I have to figure out how to give them advice about staying safe without scaring the crap out of them. I mean, most people don't end up with stalkers or have anything bad happen to them. I don't want to live in fear, and I don't want to pass that fear onto my girls. But I'll never forget how freaky it was to look out my window at night and see that guy standing there. And now, with a little more perspective and wisdom courtesy of age, I realize I was right to be scared, and should have taken it far more seriously. I was lucky it nothing worse than some freaky nights ever happened.

[Amy]

The annoying updates seem to be one of the things most people don't like about FourSquare, but this is not FourSquare's fault. If those updates from others annoy you, you don't have to unfriend someone completely, at least not on Facebook. You roll the cursor over the upper right corner of the update and click on the "X" and choose "hide all by FourSquare". You can do this with any of the annoying updates - I haven't seen a Farmville update in over a year because I hid it.

Or if the friend is checking in everywhere (and playing Farmville), then maybe they are just an annoying person and it would be best to unfriend them...

[stacey]

I've unfriended everyone who uses Foursquare.

I don't give a crap that you just filled up at the Husky in Moose Jaw. Take your stupid updates and go.

[Amy]

In defense of Four Square:
(1) The main defense - you don't have to share when you check in with anyone unless you want to; it can be your own private record of where you've been in case you want to go back. Most people seem to misunderstand this.

(2) The creativity defense - I had babies in NICU for 7 weeks. Each time we went up and visited and did weights, I checked in on Four Square (not sharing) and entered their weights in the comment section so now I have a wonderful record of their progress. I didn't need a separate ap - it was something I was used to using.

[Issa]

I offended a ton of people when I posted about this months ago, so I'll say, no. I don't think it's safe.

*runs and hides*

[Greg]

If my phone is pulling GPS all day long and doing app updates, the fucking thing will burn my earlobe if I actually try to use it to call someone. Besides, I don't think the local Price Chopper wants me to become their Mayor, only kick their ass on Twitter for being out of frozen waffles again.

I'm a social media misfit.

[elz]

I don't get foursquare. What is the point? And the twitter updates drive me insane. I really don't care where you are and who is the f-ing mayor. I've also thought how incredibly stupid to broadcast your movements...unless, of course you are later abducted and someone CSIs your new location from foursquare?!

[Rebecca]

I'll take the bait and defend Foursquare. Re: safety - if anyone wanted to get at you, they could. Foursquare doesn't make it any easier. You're not home when you're at work either. Robbers and bad guys and all sorts know that. Aye. As for stalkers, well, I used to have one in high school and he didn't need Foursquare to find me.

Re: the point, I just think it's fun to keep track of where I've been, especially having just moved to a new city. Case in point, the other night someone said that he had noticed I checked in for lunch at a place called Liberty Tavern. His girlfriend works there and we hadn't met her yet, so he called her and told her to look for us.

Other times, people will just say, "Oh I love that place too." Foursquare makes it easier to have shared experiences. Experiences, not consumption. That's how I look at it at least.

I could care less about mayorships or deals, although that's obviously part of their monetization plan. And like Jenn, I only check in a specific places - not everywhere I go all the time.

But I am a young, city-dwelling type so maybe you are right. But please, don't call me a hipster.

[Amanda P. Westmont]

I only joined Foursquare so I could become the mayor of Fantasy Video.

http://foursquare.com/venue/349786

WINNAR.

[The New Girl]

I don't even think I'd get to be mayor of my own bathroom.

[Megan]

Never heard of it, sounds incredibly stupid and unsafe- even without kids.

[Rita Arens]

Hell to the yes.

[Melanie]

Ah-HAH, mystery solved. I'd seen the "So and so is the mayor of wherever" messages on twitter and wondered what the heck it was about. I just figured it was a game like those farms or villages on facebook, and dismissed it as annoying spam.

Doesn't change anything for me. It's annoying spam.

It's not something I could see myself using. I don't want to advertise where I am to the world, or even worse, my routine!

[tara]

and to think my SIL (when she was still just "Theresa") used to give me shit about saying both my name AND my number on my outgoing answering machine message. and now her somewhat adult kids are doing this foursquare thing also. so, not only mentioning that they are at such and such bar, but that they are "phuuuuuucked!" shudddder! i'm so paranoid about people on the street knowing my routine (i'm a sahm) that i'll sometimes call back into the empty house that "we'll just be right back, ok?!". we are urban dwellers...

[Lady M]

My sister finally saw a real-life benefit: special parking spaces:

http://fourthbreakfast.blogspot.com/2011/01/real-life-benefit-to-foursquare.html

Still, neither of us use foursquare.

[Julie @ The Mom Slant]

I kind of like the idea of having a record of where I've been, but I honestly don't like the Twitter updates. Doubt I'll be on foursquare even when I finally do get my iPhone. (Four days, whoo!)

[Jenn]

I use it, but I am selective about where I check in and when. Often I check in somewhere after I've left, and there are certain place I don't check in--my kid's school, our house, doctor's office, etc.

[AmyH]

I totally agree with you. I don't think it is safe AT ALL. I have also checked the privacy setting on Facebook so that my friends can't tag me when we are out together and they check in somewhere.
Nothing says, "hey, go rob my house because I will be at a UT football game for the next 6 hours!" like being tagged at the Stadium in Facebook.

[Kaely]

Yeah, I think those things are crazy. I don't even post on facebook status about where we are or what we've been doing until we're on the way out the door. If I take a cute picture of the kids, I wait until we're in the car on the way to the next place before I post it. Checking in somewhere just seems like handing stalkers a golden ticket.

[Angella]

I'm with you, 100%. Besides the fact that I live in the buttpoke of nowhere and probably couldn't check in if I wanted to, it annoys me to no end when it clogs my Twitter/Facebook stream.

And how safe is it to announce your exact location ALL THE TIME? It's irresponsible.

[Kelly]

I joined for roughly a day and haven't been back...
1) Don't want people to know when I'm on vacation or not at my house
2) Don't want people to know where my house is
3) Don't want people to know where my kids go to school

Its one thing if friends know these things - but Internet does not need to know!

I try not to even let Facebook know I've gone out of town and supposedly those are all 'friends'.

[Kait]

Foursquare is one of the reasons I dropped Twitter. I was too annoying by people "checking in" all the time at totally average places like Target and Starbucks. You try an amazing new restaurant? Awesome. Let everyone know. You have to make a pit stop at Target on your way to the gym? I don't really care.

[Karen (Submommy)]

I adamantly refuse to join in on foursquare. I find it incredibly creepy. I also find the Places feature on Facebook a little weird, due to the fact that someone can tag you when they check in some place.

Foursquare SOUNDS fun, but the world does not need to know where I am all the time, especially when I have my kids with me.

[Emily]

I think it's very annoying on Facebook. Especially the people who register their home or their bed and tell me every night when they 'get to their bed'. To reiterate what Amanda says, we're military and my husband has a rule of 'no military insignia on cars' and definitely not the 'my other half is in Iraq' type stickers. Definitely a good way to become a victim.

[The Muskrat]

Yeah, and your husband has certainly been briefed that he shouldn't do any kind of location-announcing social media as a military officer (not that he would anyway).

I use these things with a fake name and mainly do it when I travel, because a few days later when I write a blog post about where I've been, I won't remember everything I saw/did while out of town, since I'm incapable of going out of town without rampant alcoholism, it seems.

[Laura]

I don't know what you're talking about. Who DOESN'T want to advertise that their house is empty? Or where their kids to go school? Or their routine.
I know I go out of my way to let criminals know everything about me and my kids. I mean, who wouldn't?!

Seriously, if being the mayor of Starbucks at the corner of I don't give a fuck and you're a dumbass is the highlight of someone's life that's sad. I'm a little embarrassed to be part of this generation.

[Sandi]

I think it is totally UNsafe. Why in the world would you WANT everyone to know where you were at every moment? If they want to do that, they could just move back in with their parents or something.

[Amy]

I've seen these posts on facebook and I was curious - but not curious to find try to find out what it was about.

And I'm with you - too many kids to have to worry about, the last thing I'm going to have time for is to pull out my cell phone.

[Angela@beggingtheanswer]

I've never heard of foursquare and I'm already annoyed. Wish foursquare would've just stayed a playground game...

[Mama Bub]

I think the worst is when they check in at their kid's school and post it to Twitter for all the world to see.

[Amanda]

The safety thing has always been one of my pet peeves. I see women who have said in social media that their husbands are deployed, and then they use locator apps like Foursquare on top of that. Not very good PERSEC imo.

[J from Ireland]

Never even heard of it....thank fuck.