A friend of mine checked in at JFK on Foursquare a bit ago and I noticed something interesting: forty-six others were already there with him! (Which is just four people away from the once-elusive Swarm badge.)
I think there’s something here: in fact, I think that Foursquare is reaching a turning point. Meaning, if certain large venues are granting Swarm badges to new users on a regular basis, then Foursquare’s popularity is becoming increasingly relevant and worthwhile. And furthermore, it’s revealing a fantastic opportunity to facilitate interactions between people who have checked in at a public space.
To be sure, this is a delicate task for Foursquare: supplement the check-in and capitalize on the community at a particular place without derailing users’ privacy or interrupting their natural experience. But with Facebook soon to be in on the game (thx Adam), I wouldn’t be surprised if Foursquare has something already in the works.
Foursquare is not Facebook. As such, you don’t add friends on foursquare like you do on Facebook (e.g., “everyone you know”). You just don’t.
I understand. You just joined foursquare, and you’re without any friends… so you connected your Facebook and now you might have five. Including me. Well, I’m sorry to break it to you: if we don’t hang out in real life, I’m not going to ping you with my location every time I’m out and about. Do you really want me knowing where you are every time you check in, too? Think about these things.
When you join a new social network, don’t just add everyone you know because you think it makes you look cool. It makes you look dumb.
And fine, maybe it’s my problem, because I didn’t make things more clear by not friending you on Facebook in the first place. In which case, that’s taken care of; and anyway, “NO.”
As an aside, among real friends, foursquare is just the best.
And call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s the healthiest thing in the world to read scads of mentions/@replies and effectively open the floodgate of other people’s approval/disapproval. This is where Tumblr comes in. It’s the future of social networking if your image of the future features intelligent discourse.
I feel like John Mayer is one of the more thoughtful celebrities of today—which, first of all, is refreshing. And while his post on Twitter’s “shortcomings” is more relevant to someone with literally 16,000 times more followers, he brings up some good points.
As I read, I started wondering whether or not online publishing platforms in the future will stratify based on how much thought users put into their posts. After all, we’re fairly new to this internet publishing thing anyway, so if Tumblr is best for whatever type of communicating this is, and Twitter is for a different type of communicating altogether, will we end up with an equilibrium wherein people only use the platforms that suit their style of considering things and creating content? Probably not, but time will tell.
It’s also funny to me that because John promised to follow everyone who reblogged his post, and because his post was about Tumblr as an “intellectual” space, all of us are now trying to come up with interesting and intellectual things to say in response, all so that we can tell our friends that John Mayer follows me on Tumblr. Which could never happen on Twitter, and which, in a self-propagating sense, is totally proving his point. HA.
Wow, too much social media today.
My initial impressions: Buzz is pretty cool. It’s far more personal than Twitter and even more accessible. Maybe it even collects all my media together (which should ideally help dearly in a situation like this); but seriously, unread badges are the worst interaction design element ever*, and I think I have finally reached the point where I have too many of them.
So, I’m checking out for a while. I’ll be back soon.
* Unread badges are simply bad design.
I’m going to explain this now, because I know I’ll get crap for it: the problem with unread badges is that they are all designed to draw attention and denote importance (after all, most are bright fucking red), but the number scale that each one uses is completely wrong, because it focuses on quantity and not quality. Three (3) important email messages from friends/coworkers are much more critical to me than fifteen (15) mailing list emails, and yet an unread badge count implies 5x the opposite.
There is a mandatory 10-hour delay until I confirm you as a friend.
Never mind that I know instantly when you friended me (because my email is intravenously delivered through my right arm), I am pretty much always going to wait it out half a day so as not to advertise that I actually use that website.
If you are a classmate from high school, who just clicked the “Add friend” button, you know, to see about maybe someday reconnecting somewhere, then kind of hold out for a little while longer because all you’re really going to do is stalk my photos to see what I’ve been up to since we both graduated. (Let’s be honest, here.)
On the other hand, if you and I met through a mutual friend and we really hit it off, then OF COURSE I’m going to make you feel awkward for actually being the one who made it Facebook-official. At least for a little while.
This rule holds especially if you are an attractive girl, in which case I might wait a day or two or more to feign a lack of interest that will eventually come back to bite me in the ass or be ultimately rewarding. (Although, actually, if you are a hot girl and you are reading this, then you should friend me on Facebook.)
