When FourSquare came out of location Beta and was available to the world, I was excited to participate in the location sharing app. One of the things that appealed to me when It came out was the leaderboard functionality, it became a game to me to start blanketing the city and creating check-ins for businesses and rack up the most points and try and top the leaderboard every week. Fast forward to 15 months later, almost every location in town has a foursquare checkin.
It was also a challenge to me to become the mayor of the places that i frequented, sometimes making sure I checked in before my wife had a chance to so I could steal the mayorship from her.
Then one day, I changed something. Extremely busy that day, my phone would not stop lighting up due to foursquare notifications. I turned off the notification feature and from that point on, I’ve forgotten about foursquare. I still use if on events that are important to me, but not for my everyday life events. I mean really, does anybody care that I am the mayor of Shopper’s Drug Mart? Shoppers doesn’t. I don’t feel the need to check in when I stop into a store to buy milk, nobody cares, why do I have to document this?
Foursquare notifications became like white noise to me, I didn’t care who was where, I always dismissed them when they popped up, but it was a constant reminder to me that I needed to participate in the game as well.
I think that location based apps are great, and can serve a great purpose to a business owner, but in London, Ontario there are very few businesses if any who reward the mayor with any kind of recognition. So what does being the mayor of Henry’s camera get me… nothing. You don’t care, Henry’s doesn’t care, it was for bragging rights i guess, but I don’t really care anymore.
I’m not abandoning foursquare anytime soon, I’m just going to use my checkin’s sparingly and for locations/events that I want to share that I’m attending.
