A little while back there was a bit of a heated debate in the ole twittosphere. You see foursquare, it would seem, is one of those things that’s a bit like marmite – and I’m not exactly in the “love it” camp. I personally find it annoying. Well not it of course, it's just a platform. It's just the way people use it to constantly announce where they are having a meeting, cup of tea or stopping for a poo - and that pollutes my personal online space. Now of course I hear shouts of “get a life” – and you’re absolutely right. I also know where the “unfollow” button is & I’m certainly not afraid to use it (I prefer to try and skew my tweet stream towards quality rather than quantity), but it’s the bubble of hype that surrounds foursquare that annoys me more than anything. It’s like no one has learned anything over the past 10+ years.
So I wanted to put my money where my virtual mouth was. With people shouting (in their professional capacity) that it will be “massive” I wanted to get this into the public sphere (well – the blogsphere at least). But my first challenge is “what does success look like?” I asked across my twitter network, but no one could give me anything solid. So now I’m trying here too. I’m looking for information about what level of usership a consensus of people would agree would signify “massive” and ideally sustainable business success. In the Social Media space we’ve recently seen Bebo go down (a business bought 2 years ago at $850m with 40m users (here’s the Guardian raving about it), declining to a user base of c.12m and sale 2months ago for a reported $10m) – and we all know of other similar massively hyped big ticket failures. And if you’ve had anything to do with digital media then you, like I, will have had to sit through presentations where people tell you why each of those are going to be “massive”.
There are, I’m glad to say, people far more clued up than me writing about why Foursquare is fundamentally limited, but I think that even in this day and age early adopters can’t help themselves getting caught up in thinking “cool” and fast initial take up is anything other than just that – initial and with the potential to quickly become un-cool. Unfortunately the analogy that comes to mind is of a teenage boy when he gets his first computer and unfettered internet access set up in his bedroom beyond his parents prying eyes – let’s say he’s prone to getting a little “over excited”, then quickly losing interest until something else catches his interest and we’re off again.
Now I feel I should also be clear (I can already feel the SoMe playground bristling) and say that I’m sure geo-locational services will become massive, but almost certainly only when a google or a facebook enables it to a seamless part of their offer (TechRadar article on Facebook geolocational moves & The Next Web article on Google Lattitude), because as users we are intrinsically lazy, so (I suggest) we’ll use a product maybe only 70-80% as good as another if it requires 10% less effort to use it.
Foursquare tapped into the “inner teenager” within many of the early adopters and deserves kudos for seeing just how to inflate a hype bubble so effectively – but the “mayor” thing is surely little more than this years must have boyz toy, consigned to the back of the cupboard by spring and in a charity box by the autumn. My wife has made me aware of an iPhone app called AroundMe – a perfectly good and really simple to use geolocal listing engine (or whatever the correct terminology for it is). It even seems to have a very nifty augmented reality facility (although I’ve barely used it to date and so couldn’t tell you how good that is). I don’t have a profile on it. I don’t want to share with anyone where I’m having a coffee (because I know they couldn't give a toss). But it is a nice and helpful facility.
Anyway – back to the reason for the post (there was one – promise ;). My offer still stands – if someone can provide me with information as to what “massive” will look like in 12-18months for Foursquare and we can agree on that (as compared against similar information mapped from entities such as Bebo, MySpace & Friendsreunited (remember them)) then I’ll happily put my money where my mouth is – be that in the form of a charitable donation or a meal on me or whatever.
And tbh, nearly 3million foursquare users spread across the global SoMe bubble growing capitals does not longevity make – it’s the uptake from the people & kids on the street that is what counts long term, and I reckon they’ll tell you where you can literally stick your virtual Mayoral sceptre too.
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