Oddly, it seems that people aren't using the various social networks to tell everyone where they are... Why not? Apart from letting your friends / contacts know where you currently are or have been it does very little for you.Tweet
Most of my social media experience comes from using Facebook to advertise and promote events to students and the public. So when I heard that Facebook had set up “places” my imagination began to run away.
It’s human nature for people to be nosey, especially about our friends and events, more importantly people you do not particularly like. I would bet a lot of money that people spend large amounts of their time looking at peoples profiles who they don’t really like, partners ex-girlfriends (or ex partners current girlfriends).
Location based networking has all the ingredients to be very popular and successful, but we seem to still be waiting for it to happen.
Someone really needs to have created the location you want to check into such as a fan page with an address on, whilst it is possible to do it yourself, most people won’t. You can tag friends in a location with you as well which shows up on their profile & news feed. That is where it ends. Unless an offer has been advertised for “liking” or “checking in” from the business then nothing really happens, on top of that getting your phone out loading the app and checking in where there is either limited reception or GPS signal can be frustrating.
Facebook users haven’t come on board and aren’t really using it, so much so that despite user checking in being more popular than the entire FourSquare communtiy, Facebook are no longer pushing deals on it.
I was lucky enough to visit Las Vegas this summer with my family. I was amazed at the amount of advertisement that there was to take “off line” to “online”, from promotional material to your food receipts there with links to get people to join their fan page or follow on twitter. If the same amount of effort had been made to check in as well then it would make an impact
I like the concept of Foursquare although I feel at present it is only the technology savvy that really use and understand it, and in our local town it is the same faces that appear to be Mayors of all the local venues.
Chris Pool Follow @chrisbenoitpool
