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The community of people using foursquare is growing rapidly and nowhere is this more readily apparent than right here in our lovely Slovenia.
Back when I first started using foursquare for some strange reason (I honestly don’t know) pretty much everywhere you went you were forced to first add the location. Then check-in. And you were seen as this strange voodoo magician with a funky thing that tells everyone where they are.
However since my first check-in at Hekovnik on the 27th of January this year a lot has changed. Nowadays anywhere I want to check-in the place is already available and what’s more, someone’s a mayor! Hell, just the other day I even noticed some sort of location-based advertising. That was a real shocker to be honest.
But the biggest question on everyone’s mind is: What the hell is the use here? Why am I doing this? Why do I keep checking-in everywhere I go? What possible reason could there be for publishing my location on the internets shy of wanting to get raped?
Two months ago I thought I had the answer: Electronic Graffiti
And sure enough, foursquare can indeed be used as a medium for electronically leaving a mark on places you visit. Everyone who checks-in somewhere near will see what you wrote and will wonder “Who was that guy. What was he doing here. I wonder if he liked soup”
But I soon grew weary of that. Half of the time I couldn’t think of anything whimsical to say and the other half my phone lagged and spazzed out and before I could leave a note for the world to see I felt like bashing my face in with the frustration.
So that can’t possibly be the usefulness.
Then last weekend as I was checking-in on yet another hill in the middle of nowhere a moment of clarity strook me.
Birdwatching! Trainspotting!
Foursquaring is as much a silly hobby as birdwatching or trainspotting! Back in the old days people would travel far and wide to put a check next to a colourful picture in a book, or to cross off a number in a long list of numbers inside a fat notepad of numbers.
These days, we travel far and wide to put a virtual mark on a virtual medium inside a virtual network. All we want is to go “Hey, I’ve been there and that’s great.”
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This entry was written by , posted on July 6, 2010 at 2:26 pm, filed under Real-Time web, The Web and tagged Foursquare, Slovenia. Bookmark the permalink.
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