Losing Yourself in the Real World – Foursquare Cardinal Sins

Last week Foursquare hit a pretty significant milestone of 100M check-ins. At 2M users and about 1M check-ins a day, it stands to reason that the community has begun to suffer from a lot of unintended behavior which negatively effects the overall health of user base. In some cases, some have really started to abuse their relationships and the Gaming within Foursquare.

In a twitter chat that switched to Skype, this post has be co-authored with Shayan Sanyal, CMO of Bluwan. It got us thinking about Foursquare Etiquette and 4 Basic Rules to Follow.

Rule #1: Think Twice, Then Share

The clever folks at Foursquare have made it screamingly simple to not only check-in right, left and center, but also to cross post your check-ins across your other social networks, such as twitter and Facebook. The end result is that Foursquare users have become more hated than Farmville users on Facebook (at least, in my book). Trust me, your friends that are not connected to you on Foursquare, couldn’t care less that you’ve punched in at work, or for the 13th time at Starbucks in 4 hours for that matter! Honestly, this jaw clenching stuff will result in either a “hide”, “unfriend,” “unfollow” or the ultimate social assassination command, “the block” on your various non-location based social networks.

This is about to get significantly worse, with Facebook introducing its own check-in capabilities later this year. We’re about to get inundated. Real information, thoughts, comments, pics, videos, are about to be submerged by a deluge of location based check-ins.

When to Cross Post

• Is the check-in some awesome location that will make my real or virtual friends envious, jealous, admiring, respectful, happy or sad? Are you going to trigger a human emotion beyond: “meh!”
• Conference check-in to alert my peers, a shout, or call to action, or a party is perfectly appropriate.

What happens if I don’t?
Simple. You will lose followers. Real life friends aren’t really going to hack the spam you’re generating. They will hide your Foursquare updates (which is annoying, as you cannot make them envious when you’re checking in with [insert pop/Hollywood/Bollywood star here] at [insert cool club/restaurant/rave/beach party here]). They will use the kiss of death and unfriend you. You will be lonely. And sad.

Rule #2: Don’t Talk to Strangers

Just because you have 1,057 followers on twitter that are on Foursquare, doesn’t mean you need or should import all of them into Foursquare. Of course, Foursquare makes it easy for you to do this, but why would you? Unlike Facebook, which has been getting a lot of grief on its privacy policies lately, Foursquare has a very basic and binary approach to privacy. You check-in, or don’t or you go “off grid”, which is another way of saying I’m out and about, but no way in hell am I letting you in on the secret. However, you can’t say I want these friends to know where I am, and these friends to be in the dark. Very democratic and basic. And dangerous. If you don’t agree, check out Please Rob Me.

The marketing and loyalty aspects Foursquare are pushing, give you discounts, Mayor coupons, and special location promotions, that all makes sense, but that’s really up to you as an individual and how much you’re willing to give up to corporations. Chances are, if you’re on Foursquare, you don’t really care about that anyway.

What happens if I don’t?
The best case scenario, the “strangers” you invite into your world may feel iffy about friending you. If these are work colleagues, professional contacts, don’t take it personally. Worst case scenario, someone may take advantage of you. This is definitely opening up some interesting real life impact scenarios (burglary/theft, identity theft, slander, etc).

Rule #3: Rapid-Fire or Delayed Check-ins are a No-No

Rapid fire check-ins are considered cheating on Foursquare. What are they? Essentially some folks have the bad habit of checking-in to places they walk or drive by, but do not actually “visit” (e.g. You’re on a bus, and you check-in at every stop. Foursquare invokes mechanisms to minimize this, but some people still do it. And it’s lame. First, it does not really impact your “gaming status” on Foursquare, as you will not receive points, awards, Mayorships or badges for rapid fire check-ins, but mostly because it defeats the purpose of using Foursquare socially. If you want to meet up with Friends, add Tips, and be a “respectable” member of the Foursquare community, then check-ins to a place for a split second before moving to the next isn’t the way to go about it. It basically means that there is no potential to link your Foursquare account to your actual physical location.

The end game on this one is that your Foursquare account is meant to be a social indicator of your physical presence. If you’re using a location based social network, do you really want to forsake the possibility of getting real-time recommendations on what to do (based on your check-in profile), take advantage of localized discounts, and potentially meet up with new or existing friends? Rapid fire or delayed check-ins makes this difficult to achieve. So relax. Have a cigar. Enjoy the sights! Make friends. Put in what you get out.

Rule #4: Duplicating locations to get Mayorships

This is pathetic, but it happens all the time. Shayan was at the Eurostar Station in Paris a few days ago on his way back to London. He takes the London/Paris train trip about once a week, and have been doing so since February 2010. He’s actually the Mayor of that location on Foursquare. However, he got ticked when he fired up the iPhone app the other day and noticed four entries for the same station! That got him really annoyed. Of course, he started checking into all of them, one at a time (until the rapid fire-checkin rule kicked in that is). This defeats the purpose of the gaming aspect of Foursquare. While you can spend the time to go onto the website and eliminate duplicates, you cannot stop people from creating new ones.

But more seriously, it dilutes the value of Foursquare to the end user. Tips get fragmented across different multiple entries and it diminishes promotions that might not show up. Part of this is Foursquare’s fault, and they should have better data quality management on the location database, but folks, please, if you see a venue already exists corresponding to where you are, don’t create a new venue! Just check-in! So what if you won’t become Mayor right away. That’s the way it ought to be. Behaving this way just dents your online and real-life reputation; there are more productive uses of your time.

Final Thoughts

Foursquare is certainly a community in which has a lot of opportunity. Meet-ups with friends, location based offers, marketing promotions for loyalty, educating users about what’s nearby and much more to come. The principal concern is that people are losing themselves in the game of Foursquare and in Real Life, instead of trying to merge the two to provide enjoyment, enhancement and entertainment. It’s perhaps one of those things, where taking the extra minute to think, then act, would help out everyone to keep this community relevant and growing.