There has certainly been a buzz about Foursquare and I don't know why. I see Foursquare as annoying and will never use it anymore. (I have an account and I yes I know how it works.) As you probably know I use Twitter a lot and when I get an update of someones location from Foursquare I will usually stop following that person.
I have a guy that I was following on Twitter that checked into Foursquare every morning from a Starbucks. The first thing that popped into my head is the guy should make coffee at home and send the $5 he would save everyday to a charity or something. Odds are if I had known he likes to waste money like that I don't want to be following him anyway. While he thinks it's cool to be at a Starbucks everyday I am totally thinking otherwise.
I have another buddy that checks in almost every half hour from the same locations everyday, once again I don't care where you are or where you are going. Since this guy is up in Canada and I have no plans on going there it is nothing but annoying when I got these updates. It makes me wonder if this guy really thinks we care where he is.
Someone else I was following on Twitter used Foursquare to give updates whenever they stopped to eat. Everyday his morning update was from Dunkin Donuts. His lunch was from another fast food place and dinner was from KFC. When I see this person all he talks about is how his diets never work and he doesn't know why. He may be the mayor of his local Mcdonalds but to me he something else.
I don't get why anyone would let anybody know their location using the gps on their cellphone. You have no idea how they are going to use this information or if they are going to sell it. What if Foursquare was sold tomorrow to an advertising company? Now someone you had no relationship with knows your popular locations and what time you are usually there. To me this is the scariest part of Foursquare.
What happens if a crime is commited in or near your location, you could end up being dragged into something you know nothing about. I know that is far fetched but it could happen, all because you had the need to tell strangers where you are.
Last week I was reading about how big brands were giving money towards Foursquare. Little do they know there are many people like me that find Foursquare as annoying. Whenever I see the companies that are using this I stop buying their products forever. Never again will I buy a product from a certain soda company that gave Foursquare 10k a few weeks back. Guess they are doing me a favor since I drank alot of soda over the years.
I am all for Social media but this service is totally spammy to me. There is no circumstance where I would keep following a person that likes to post their location updates to Twitter. If you want to use Foursquare be my guest but please turn off your updates on Twitter.
I use FourSquare in a pretty limited capacity. I don’t check in anywhere when I’m with my kids, and I don’t check in often (in fact, I don’t think I’ve checked in anywhere since I left Las Vegas after Affiliate Summit). I’m annoyed by frequent updates, too – checking in every half hour is ridiculous. However… I don’t unfollow someone just because they pipe their updates to Twitter. To me, that’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
I don’t like Nascar, I can’t stand car racing. But I won’t unfollow you or Deb simply because you occasionally tweet about it. I like you guys more than that. I look at FourSquare the same way. As long as people aren’t abusing it with too-frequent updates, I’m okay with it. But I still wish they’d turn off the automatic updates.
Thanks for your comment, that is the reason why I have a seperate account for my NASCAR tweeting @awesomewreckage. I try to keep our racing talk there but some people have found my main twitter and followed me on it also.
Exactly – if you guys were all-Nascar-all-the-time, that would be different. But you occasionally throw out a random racing tweet and it doesn’t bother me. That’s why I don’t follow @awesomewreckage 😉 It’s nothing personal of course, it’s just a subject I’m not into… which is why I don’t mind it when people don’t follow my comic book twitter account lol
That’s how I see FourSquare, too. If it’s an occasional thing, if it’s not spammy, I don’t mind it. I just wish people would understand that they can save everyone a lot of trouble by simply turning off the automatic Twitter updates in their FourSquare accounts.
I think is a great post because I don’t think a lot of people posting the updates realize how annoying they are. I’m unfollowing people who post more Foursquare than they do other information.
Maybe they don’t realize the settings are adjustable, but some people are really annoying. I’m sure some things I do are annoying too, but like Vinny, I try to use different accounts for different things.
I am also worried that people aren’t thinking about sharing their locations. It seems we have gone from being to closed to being way to open.
I don’t mind 4sq updates when they contain a useful message. “I’m the mayor of…” is useless to me. But if you go to the movies, and your 4sq update is “Seeing Twilight for the 16th time”, well, I’d unfollow you for seeing Twilight 16 times, but that tweet is useful! You’re telling me something.
My latest trend is to unfollow anyone who RT’s their #FF mentions (often 5-6 in a row). If I see your RT’d #FF mention, then I’m already following you, and it’s completely useless. I’ve been trying to unfollow one person / day – don’t give me a reason to make it you.
Now that you’ve got me going, just because I have 23 mutual friends with someone else on Facebook, doesn’t mean we’re friends. I use Facebook for more personal / family posts, and Twitter for industry info. If I don’t really know the person, we’re not going to be friends on Facebook.
My rant is over… for now.
Eric I like your idea of un-following 1 person a day. I might borrow that idea.
I am the opposite when it comes to Facebook, I allow all friend invites because to me Facebook will eventually (if it hasn’t already) become the spam that Myspace has become. It gives me more people to push to my fan pages and eventually to my sign up newsletter.
@Eric – I hear ya on the #FF stuff. And I know I may be guilty of some of the 4sq stuff, but I do it just for the game… and often forget to check in anywhere either lol. I’m sure eventually the shiny newness will wear off and it’ll go the way of Brightkite and I’ll never check in anymore.
And yeah, definitely unfollow anyone who saw Twlight 16 times!
Some people are definitely overboard with FourSquare (*cough* @therealtimejones *cough*), but I’d say pretty much everybody I follow makes a Tweet occasionally that is annoying or irrelevant to me.
Like just yesterday, a couple people were RT’ing Paula Abdul.
I was thinking… I’d rather be reading a Starbucks FourSquare Tweet. 😛
Well said Eric!
Early nominee for Blog Comment of the Year…
“But if you go to the movies, and your 4sq update is “Seeing Twilight for the 16th time”, well, I’d unfollow you for seeing Twilight 16 times, but that tweet is useful! You’re telling me something.”
Well said Vinny and Eric. Eric, my brain can actually recreate your voice, tone and inflection for your words, and I can hear you saying the quote above!
I loathe the “Mayor” 4square tweets, because it throws me off, I feel like it’s going to be a REAL tweet, and then I wish I had my 1 or 2 seconds back. I have taken people off my friend’s column for too many 4SQ tweets *ahem*TLF*ahem* but keep it in the ALL column.
But let’s not complain in vain here, let’s let FOUR SQUARE know that their DEFAULT Twitter update status needs to be in the off position, and caution those that wish to turn it on how it can be annoying and they may lose followers.
/rant off
Okay Vinny, I have the sneaking suspicion that you are referring to me with the remark about someone living in Canada. I push my foursquare check-ins to Twitter maybe 2 times per day, and usually only if I also send a ‘shout’ with it. I’m trying to encourage my friends in my town to use the service more, because it’s nice to connect with them when I’m nearby.
As for Eric’s rant about RTing #ff mentions, I am guilty as charged, but my motive is to promote the person who mentioned me, as well as the other people they mentioned for #ff. I typically do this when I’m too busy to write my own “Follow Friday” tweets.
Now for MY twitter annoyance. 😉 I can’t stand it when someone includes a link with EVERY single tweet! I’m all for promoting whatever it is you do, but make some deposits instead of constantly asking for withdrawals!
I don’t think I’ll ever post a 4square check-in to twitter without thinking “Will Vinny dump me now?” At least I’m not Tim Jones 😉
Ouch…it also appears that I ‘won’ the Eric Nagel unfollow award 🙁
AND, Vinny has already unfollowed me and removed me from his lists! Ouch, it would have been nice to get a note about being annoying instead of a blog post, just a thought. 🙂 No hard feelings, there are plenty of people I like that annoy me too!
Actually Nathan you just got caught up in my massive 4square deletions, the post wasn’t about you but I could see how you think it was.
When I came to your name I figured I would just follow you on my coffee based Twitter account only since that where we talk the most anyway.
I like to use foursquare to explore my new city. I especially like it at a big event to see what everyone is up to. The new thing I find annoying or that has not caught my attention at all is Buzz. I think you like it right?
Yes Stephanie I like Buzz although I have not figured it out 100% yet.
Vinny,
Well spoken. I can see your points and they are well taken. There seems to be a fine line in all social media between spammy and informative. I guess as marketers we are all aware and trying to stay on top of whatever is going to attract users. (I think in 2006 a lot of people said Twitter was really stupid).
Since you wrote that post, the emergence of pleaserobme.com has proven your big brother type point with everyone knowing a little too much about you.
I think the awnswer my be to turn off the twitter notifications and use it within friends and people who are also using the app.
Just a few cents,
Rob
Vinny, what a great post. I have been annoyed about 4square for a while, but thought perhaps I was missing the point… and you have articulated my thoughts exactly!
I appreciate all the comments here — I think I can tell what’s annoying or not, but it’s good to learn from others’ impressions. I hope I’m not guilty of too many Twitter sins, LOL.
I’ll chip in one other annoyance for me: The attitude that “if I follow you and you don’t follow me back, I will unfollow you.” I have NO expectation that anyone will blindly follow me just because I followed them. I appreciate it when they do, and I hope I earn their long-term followership. Believe it or not, I actually take time to visit a person’s page, learn about them and decide if I’m interested… it’s not an “auto” kind of thing. Guy Kawasaki would disagree — and maybe you folks will too, but I can handle a few tomatoes thrown at me. 🙂
Thanks for the thought provocation!!
Just thought I’d chime in with my hatred for foursquare too. I can see how it could be used for some good but I have yet to see it as anything but annoying. I hope Yahoo buys it and throws it in the dumpster.
If I have to find out my friends are in their kitchen or their garden one more time I am going to use foursquare to find them and roundhouse their asses. It’s damned annoying!
I’m so glad this thread exists. I also share everyone’s discontent for Foursquare and other social networking annoyances of the same equivalence. In fact, I was using StumbleUpon today and I came across a great article about Foursquare and what would happen if it was bought out by a company that would have ulterior motives in using the location information of thousands of people. My mom also read it and she got scared and said your moving in with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air. I whistled for a cab and when it came near the license plate said fresh and had a dice in the mirror.