I came across this while using another social networking site, Twitter.
Foursquare is a location-based social networking website. This service is available for users of GPS enabled mobile devices. Users can check into the venue that at a particular point in time and choose to have their "check-ins" posted on their Twitter or Facebook accounts or both.
If a user checks into a location more than anyone else for the past 2 months, they will be crowned "Mayor" of that venue. This will continue until someone else checks into the location more than the current "mayor".
It is useful in that it allows you to find out where your friends are at a particular point of the day. I have a group of friends who wanted to give a particular friend a surprise birthday party and that friend happened to be using foursquare. So, they used foursquare to find out where she was and successfully surprised.
Some celebrities also use this social networking website as a tool by which they can interact with their fans. When they visit a certain restaurant or attraction in another country, they "check into" their location on Foursquare. This serves as a way they can indirectly communicate with their fans as their fans might comment or ask about the place.
This also leds on to my next point. Businesses can use this as a tool for marketing their product(s). For example, if a celebrity happens to visit a restaurant and enjoy himself or herself, the restaurant manager could always take this chance to request if he or she could help promote the restaurant by taking photos and posting online or request that he or she "check-into" the location on Foursquare if he or she has an account. This helps in promoting the business and would definitely bring more business.
Comparing this to Twitter, I feel that Foursquare is indeed useful in helping in marketing business more than twitter. However, I feel that this inevitably leads to a loss in privacy. If we were to "check-into" whatever venues we are at everyday, it might attract people who mean harm. Celebrities using this might also bring trouble to themselves.
Furthermore, with Foursquare, you have to "check-into" a location before you can actually post something you might want to say at a particular point in time. This means that you won't be able to post a status as and when you want just like what Twitter allows its users to do. Hence, I feel that Foursquare is rather limiting in its usage.
No comments:
Post a Comment