Comments on: Cool Or Not Cool: FourSquare Divides The Web

By: Sujay Ghosh

Sujay Ghosh — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 08:02:12 +0000

To be or not to be is a point that the user has to decide . Foursquare is getting into crowdsourcing and that is probably the next BIG thing for social media. So the business model is paramount ; fortunately / unfortunately girls have probably been the factor behind major companies. Bill Gates rose to fame in school as he had developed a program, which would allow users to select class room seats , – he did it in such a way, that the beautiful girls sat next to him. Same holds good for Facebook, where Mark started with ranking the girls . So it might be a jealous wife there , who might turn Foursquare into something big. By the way, I am also into LBS, and you can read this http://sujayghosh.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/location-based-networking/

By: Nick Cambridge

Nick Cambridge — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:02:57 +0000

The details of the post all make sense, its interesting that you dont like fouraquare asking where you are as this is a growing trend in Facebook as well, it must have it’s fans? a really good post, thanks

By: Graham

Graham — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:31:30 +0000

Deeply agree. Hateful on twitter and only marginally useful elsewhere (in fact that’s a lie, I can’t think of a single bit of true value that Foursquare has added to my life).

I know this has been mentioned above but some 3rd party tools allow filters. To add to the choice may I recommend the most excellent Tweetdeck.

filter: -4sq

…and breathe :)

By: Adriel Hampton

Adriel Hampton — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:10:02 +0000

Utterly loathesome Twitter integration. And I suspect if the people who do it actually read their stream, they’d feel the same. Maybe even more annoying than sponsored ads.

By: Tim Danyo

Tim Danyo — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:33:22 +0000

Foursquare needs to set it up to be a hyper local interface with a 100 mile limit and your friends are only allowed in that 100 mile radius you are currently inside. It is pointless otherwise and a putrid non relevant text generator.

By: dvs

dvs — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:09:33 +0000

Remember when Spy Master was all over Twitter? Foursquare is the exact same garbage to me. If I wanted to know where Foursquare users were, I would use that service and follow them. Same with Gowalla and all the rest. Their cross-promotion on twitter is nothing more than an abuse of a service with an existing user base in a bid to increase theirs. IMO, Twitter should be charging them for the advertising they're getting.

By: petermavrik

petermavrik — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:18:34 +0000

Couldn’t agree more. I unfollowed all Twitter folks who were broadcasting their crap in the timeline.

By: Frank

Frank — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:20:53 +0000

All those Foursquare tweets make me think of the Tony Roberts character in Play it Again, Sam. The first thing he does when he arrives somewhere is go to the phone and tell his seceretary that he’ll be at such and such number between this time and that. It’s a great running gag and makes it impossible for me take Foursquare seriously. Which may turn out to be a shame.

By: Russell

Russell — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:01:03 +0000

This post was spot on. As FourSquare picks up momentum, the early adopters I follow are using it more often and I can’t do anything to get their completely useless location updates out of my stream. Do you think Twitter should address this issue, as the only way I can fix this is to unfollow them, thereby decreasing the value of Twitter? Like you, I use the web version both on my computer and my phone so I have no filtering options. Thanks for blogging exactly what I was thinking!

By: Kyle Cameron Studstill

Kyle Cameron Studstill — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:09:10 +0000

This to me gets at the core of the ‘usability issue.’ Check-ins aren’t going away, just like people talking about where they are and what they’re doing aren’t going away. They’ve always been core pieces of human behavior; the whole concept of a status-update service like Twitter was most previously manifested in ‘status’ on instant messenger clients.

The problem, as the post and some comments allude to, is a filter problem. “This would all be okay if I could choose X to appear in my stream or Y to not appear in my stream or make it such that Z appears in my W stream” seems to be the sentiment. Increasingly, services like Foursquare and Twitter are becoming invisible backends for front-facing applications that allow you to do just that.

How to organize and make best use of filters…that’s a larger and stickier problem. But that’s not a Foursquare-specific problem, any more than how to avoid people who only post dramatic notes on the status of their relationship is a Facebook-specific problem.