Foursquare and 7 Years Ago, Geo Location Services

Posted: March 11th, 2010 | Author: Julio Hernandez-Miyares | Filed under: Startup, Technology |

EDITS on Thursday Evening March 11,2010

Is someone reading my blog?
Starbucks and Foursquare

Been giving serious thought to why I take the trouble to check-in my locations via Foursquare and less often via Gowalla. Well I do have an understanding why centered around the gaming aspect of winning badges, becoming mayor of my own Subway station or frequented Starbucks. But outside of this very basic gaming angle and the pride of being Mayor of an out of the way Dunkin Donuts in Whitestone, Queens , what utility is actually being driven for me?

Over time, and the time may be near, I can imagine the utility to the business establishments and franchises that I visit having access to the stream of information about who ,when and how often folks are frequenting their establishments.To what extent FourSquare aware and engaged folks are representative of the demographic of any particular establishment’s customer base is probably up in the air but at least at the current moment, I doubt they are very representative. Also part of the information is already gleaned from the cash register of course and I don’t know to what extent users of Foursquare or like minded products will allow anything “private” to be divulged to the venues they visit.

Representative or not, as the location service increases in breadth whether through the likes of Foursquare/Gowalla or by other Local sites ie Yelp comes to mind adopting this as a platform feature , over time the collected data will be more then about just the early adopter, wiz-bang type of person.
What will drive mass adoption? I don’t believe that mass adoption will occur until the act of checking in is instrumented to be so easy and automatic that one doesn’t even think about it. Often times I start checking in while waiting on line , say at a Starbucks which is notorious for long lines especially in New York City, and I have still not completed the checkin process by the time I have reached the barrister to place my order. It should be like E-Z Pass , the automated toll collection system spear-headed in New York City for the traffic choked toll lines across all the river crossings. You go through a special lane and the rest is done via transponder on the E-Z Pass side and conceptually the same for the “Checkin” side.

But now I am back to the crux of the question,

what is in it for me?

From a social networking perspective, I am more selective of the “friends” chosen. They represent people I have known personally for some time and in all likelihood interacted with them on a social basis including outside of work. That selectivity can be powerful especially compared to the “whoring” that goes on on Facebook where it appears the concept of Friends is severely deprecated. Foursquare doesn’t put any limitations on the extent of my social graph but the nature of the service makes one more hesitant to just accept anyone as a “friend”.

I imagine the selectivity in growing one’s Foursquare network is not just innate to myself but will be a generally accepted principle. If that turns out to be the case the usefulness of that network will be magnified. In it’s most simple venue based extension, I can learn about or take as recommendations establishments I should try based on my own network’s frequenting of those establishments.
Or better yet, as a business establishment looking to extend my reach I can tap into a customer’s Foursquare network (with their permission of course) to make offers available that would entice potential new customers.

Though I can see lots of potential in the limited network of my Foursquare friends. it is also possible to intersect with a feature that allows things/events to be “pushed” to me depending on what specific locale I happen to be at the moment. A totally made up and unfathomable example, a theater’s ticket sales are lagging as showtime nears at 8pm on Broadway. Why not blast out a last minute appeal to those that may be enticed and in the area with discounts or other inducement to fill the seats that may otherwise go wanting.

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