This week I have been playing with Foursquare.
Initially i was very wary of this young social network, mainly because I thought the people I followed on twitter were using it to spam me. I mean, it’s of no relevance to me if someone just became mayor of their sock drawer, or checked into Starbucks for the 34th day in a row. *Yawn*
So, what changed?
The first thing to catch my eye was mention of a #squareup on twitter. That sounded like my sort of thing! Taking the online offline and vice versa is a passion. You all know I love a good tweetup, surely a squareup would just as interesting. How cool would it be to meet all the people that love your favourite bar or restaurant as much as you do? They must be great people if they like that place as much as you!
So I signed up for an account, baulked at the user interface and hesitated over checking in anywhere that looked a bit “sad”. Eventually, on Wednesday, I plucked up the courage to check in at Reading’s new Workhouse Coffee shop. I already knew the mayor and five out of the six other foursquare users to check in there from the Reading Twitter community. This place obviously wasn’t a bit “sad” at all.
But this isn’t helping me meet new people…
For the last few weeks I have been changing trains at Newbury station three or four mornings a week on my way into London. Every morning people get off one train and wait for their connection to arrive. They get coffee, they read books, they look at their phones, anything to avoid looking at each other. They’ve started to recognise their fellow regular travers, probably have little jokey names for some of them, but they have never spoken… This is a strange non-community. People all linked by something in common, all meeting at the same time and place, yet they never talk, never share the experience and never admit that they are a community. What if you were to put them all in the same place on the Internet though?
So, I now check in at Newbury Station when i pass through. So have 43 other people. 43 people that have passed through Newbury train Station are on Foursqare! Sleepy Newbury…
I now know that they mayor’s name is Lee and he’s also on Twitter. I wasn’t following him before, but I am now. I’m hoping that I can translate this into something… create a community or find a friend where once there was just awkwardness and a lack of eye-contact.
Then I start wondering how I can use it for evil!
And by evil, I mean business. Everyone’s talking about giving special offers to the Mayor of your establishment. That’s all very well of you’re a coffee shop or a gym. But what if you’re a recruiter or a sourcer?
Michael VanDervort pointed out an article by Daniel Schwarts “Who’s the Mayor of Your Company? What Employers Need to Know About Location-Based Networks Like Foursquare”. This got me thinking. People are checking in at their places of work. Then they are also using foursquare to tell you where they and their colleagues go for a drink after work… That’s very powerful information for a recruiter to have. Look up the office of a target company on Foursquare and voila - a list of names. Names that link to their twitter and facebook accounts, and display their friends.
After realising all these things, it’s looking a lot less boring, isn’t it?
Now, I have to go checkin to my kitchen for a cuppa… I’m mayor there, don’t you know?
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