When and where to check-in

Location based social networks like Foursquare are quite controversial. They seem to be gaining in popularity, but at the same time many people avoid them as being a form of submitting to surveillance.

I think that the key attraction is that it forms a game. For example, the Foursquare user who checks-in somewhere most frequently in a 3 month period is elected as the mayor of that location. One time, I was very proud to be declared mayor of my local gym - even though I am sure many people went more frequently but just didn't check in on Foursquare. On the other hand, I was less thrilled to find out that I had become mayor of my local dentists.

Another key factor to remember is that checking in is voluntary. It requires a few clicks on your smartphone to check-in to somewhere and this is not something that I could do accidentally and reveal that I was somewhere that I ought not be.

One dangerous feature introduced by the new Swarm appp is called neighbourhood sharing. If you enable this feature it automatically reveals to your friends the neighbourhood that you are in. This is not quite as bad as revealing your actual location - for example if I revealed that I was in Castleknock I could be either working from home or dropping into my local pub for a quick pint during the work day. Nevertheless I recommend that you shouldn't enable this feature if you have concerns about your privacy.

Swarm v Foursquare

I have been using Foursquare for a number of years. In general I find this to be a useful and fun application for letting my friends know where I am, although many friends express puzzlement about why I would willingly disclose my location.

Recently Foursquare started encouraging me to try out their new Swarm application. Initially I was reluctant and stuck with the app that I already knew. However,they finally disabled check-ins with Foursquare and so I was forced to install swarm.

My first impressions of Swarm are quite positive - it looks like a nice upgraded version of the Foursquare app. However, I don't see why they had to split off check-ins into a new app. It seems that mashable agree with me.

Much of FourSuqre's attraction comes from its mystery

FourSquare is clearly the leading location based social network. The reason seems to be that most people agree that it is the platform that provides most fun. Unfortunately for their competitors it is hard to define exactly why it provides most fun. Personally I think that much of the enjoyment comes from an element of mystery about how exactly the rewards are handed out.

If you have used FourSquare you will probably know that they award badges for various activity. Once you unlock a badge, they give you a page explaining exactly why you were awarded it. However, they don't tell you in advance exactly what you will have to do tho earn badges that you have not yet been awarded. It is not really hard to guess that for example the Newbie badge is earned for your first ever check-in and if you hover over the logo for an unearned badge they will give you a hint, but you still don't know the rules for sure.

For me, I know that FourSquare often gives me a pleasant surprise when I earn badges or points that I was not expecting. For example, this morning when I checked into my local Lidl I got a surprise to see that I earned 25 bonus points for being the anniversary of my first check-in. If the FourSquare team keep up the good work  I will probably keep using it for a feew more years.

My Triple Mandate

I think it is too easy to become a mayor on Foursquare. I blogged earlier about how I became mayor of my local Gym and without any great effort on my behalf I am now also mayor of two different restaurants. In Irish politics there used to be a common practice whereby many TDs (members of the Irish Parliament) were also members of their local council, but  now this practice has been outlawed and people elected to parliament are forced to resign their seats on their local council. Maybe Foursquare should have a similar policy and only allow people to be mayor of one place at a time. What do you think?

How I became mayor of my local Gym

Since a General Election has just been called in Ireland, many people might be wondering how to achieve elected office. Those of you who follow my Twitter stream might have noticed my recent tweet "I just ousted @slkav as the mayor of Westpoint Health and Fitness Blanchardstown on @foursquare http://4sq.com/6LqwIq" and wondered how I achieved that.

This was actually achieved very easily compared to how difficult it would be to become a real mayor. I recently started to use a service called FourSquare which allows you to check-in to various locations to tell your friends where you are. Initially I was quite skeptical about the potential benefit of using such a service, but since it seems to be growing in popularity I said I would see what the fuss is about.

An obvious thing to worry about using a service like this is that you might not want people to know where you are at any particular time. However, this is not really an issue, since FourSquare only tracks my  location when I explicitly check-in to a location (typically by using an application on my phone). This is quite different from services like Google Latitude or Facebook Places which can sometimes be publishing your location without you being consciously aware of that.

Initially I did not use it much because I was not sure when I might want to publish my location but then I joined a local gym and decided that I ought to boast about that fact to my friends. In my first check-in, I did not realize that the Gym was already registered on Foursquare and so I accidentally registered it a second time. The next two times I visited the gym I check-in properly with FourSquare and hey presto I was declared to be the mayor (based upon the fact that I had checked-in more frequently than anyone else in the previous 60 days) and FourSquare automatically tweeted the good news on my behalf. I should point out that at the time I was the only person check-in to the gym on FourSquare, but the gym was packed so the most frequent person to check in on FourSquare is not really a good estimate for who is visiting the gym most often.

Will this service catch on? I think it probably will, because it combines a fun element. I saw that my predecessor as mayor of the gym tweeted "nooooooooooooooooooooo!" in reply to the news of me becoming mayor, so maybe FourSquare can encourage more visits to the gym as we battle for the mayorship.