Plan Less, Do More

About a month ago I started a mini experiment with Foursquare. It was entirely prompted by noticing a listing for an open meet-up in London with the founder Dennis Crowley and a recognition that if I’ve just quit my job to ‘go digital’ (aka learn more about it, get involved) then I should probably get off my high (old world) horse about Foursquare. It seemed like the perfect excuse to justify spending some time messing around with Foursquare and I inadvertently ended up roping a friend, Jon, into an unplanned Foursquare race. I’ll openly admit that it’s not a product that felt desperately relevant to me, but during the course of the month I’ve been both positively surprised – by the strengths of the technology, but also think a lot of my original diagnosis holds true. Foursquare for me is still a bit of an Awkward Teenager of a product, but could grow into a much more Sophisticated and Powerful product.

My initial prejudice against the product was primarily rooted in a dislike of the branding, identity and language associated with Foursquare. I instinctively dislike the notion of ‘checking-in’ to restaurants, bars and galleries – reducing such social past-times to transactional moments to be traded in for ‘digital points’. Further I have even less desire to ‘cash in’ my social life if the ‘digital points’ I earn are in the form of naff titles such as becoming the ‘Mayor’ of Starbucks and the logo, ‘badges’ and other design elements have all the visual sophistication of an episode of Bratz. Other ‘badges’ one can earn in return for ‘checking-in’ range from the logical ‘Adventurer’, ‘Explorer’  - simple carrot-type rewards to encourage increased usage, to the specific ‘Socialite’, ‘Gymrat’, ‘Bookworm’, to the quite frankly somewhat unfathomable ‘Crunked’, ‘Zoetrope’ & ‘Ziggys Wagon’. Yes this is partly an issue of lost-in-translation, between the US and Britain, but also speaks to my initial point, if in fact I put a high value on my social life and it forms an intrinsic part of my identity – trading it in for some form of digital currency which has little resonance for me is an entirely unappealing proposition.

Putting these identity issues aside, I was surprised to discover that Foursquare delivers some incredibly useful features. It provides access to a wealth of location-specific information – okay so we all knew that – but it’s only when you’re in an unknown street and looking for something specific, eg. to satisfy a craving for a good roast, find some free Wifi access, that the value of having a huge body of micro and  very personal reviews becomes evident. There really are enough people using it in London that you could easily do away with a guidebook and still find a good local pub, grub and somewhere fun to explore later. Further if you really are of an indecisive, non-experimental nature, you’ll probably be able to pick out the house specialities from the menu via Tips left by Foursquarers, or even a photo of their meal! Clearly I’d never advocate solely ‘following the guidebook’ – the most fun in a city, for better or worse, is always discovering places by chance, but from time to time, drawing upon the collective exploration of others is great.

Slightly less obviously, Foursquare has a couple of features which are super useful if you live a busy life in a big city. I love exploring London and love to be able to make good recommendations to friends – being able to recommend somewhere which is just right for a certain friend or occasion is an art I aspire to. As a result I’m always noticing new places I want to check out (mostly from the bus window) and am keen to keep track of good places I’ve been. Step in Foursquare’s To Do List – you can ‘star’ places you want to return to & the ability to browse back through your personal ‘check-in’ history – both incredibly useful. This does however bring me to what for many people is the big downside of Foursquare, namely security concerns.

Besides being an arguably too image-conscious Londoner, I was also put off using Foursquare by concerns about sharing too much information about my personal whereabouts and the security implications of this. I didn’t like the idea that someone I don’t know, could start to look for patterns in my behaviour and work out where I might be. I still don’t like the idea of this and it is distinctly weird to ‘check in’ to a restaurant and be informed who else ‘is there’. However further inspection reveals that you cannot in fact access a full history of where someone has been, but you can get a bit of an impression of types of places they hang out and types of things they like (via their Tips history). So partially reassuring and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that in a busy city, if somebody really wanted to, they could easily deduce the same things, based on my sense of dress, eavesdropping on a conversation or watching which bus stop I get off at. I’m still careful about how I use Foursquare – I don’t check in on transport, and definitely don’t check in at home (the risks of doing so are well documented) and not too frequently at anyone place – don’t expect me to become a ‘Mayor’ anytime soon (and definitely not at Starbucks!).

However my mini-experiment has revealed that the Foursquare product is delivered by a powerful technology platform, with a multitude of possible uses – many of which are being explored by app developers via the Foursquare API. Quite frankly I could write a whole post on some of the weird and wonderful applications – take a gander here. Right now however, Foursquare still feels like it is designed for a high-school market demographic (Douchebag anyone?) and right now, like an Awkward Teenager insists on seeing the world in a certain way. It’s a shame because I think that paying some greater attention to the branding, language and identity – essentially some form of in depth ‘re-skinning’ of the product – could create a more Sophisticated Product which would be highly attractive to a mobile, urban demographic, with significant levels of disposable income. Ultimately Foursquare’s revenues are dependent on serving Local Merchants and Brand Marketers, so I can’t help but question whether perhaps the Teenager identity they’ve targeted was the right place to start…

… to be investigated further in future posting. In the meantime a couple of useful references

- most recent summary stats I could find … 2010 .. sure there are more out there, but a neat review

- comment on the kick-ass merchant interface Foursquare has been developing – was hoping I could find some screenshots – I was lucky enough to see Dennis present on this at  Guardian Activate Conference in London – but can’t seem to find any shots online right now.

- great analysis as to why Foursquare could trump Groupon in long run

And lastly, what happened to my Foursquare race  with Jon – well he definitely won on points (I’m blaming bad London wifi!) but I did end up having a nice conversation with Dennis and his biz dev guy, Holger – both really lovely guys, although I don’t envy their globetrotting schedule  - their levels of check-ins are out of this world!