Foursquare frites sans huile montparnasse ?
Mobility. FourWhere Maps Out Foursquare Tips for Everybody - Geolocation - Lifehacker. Foursquare Responds To Please Rob Me: Please Shut Up. The team behind the hot location-based service Foursquare took the time tonight to write a rare longer post about location privacy.
Their basic stance: we take privacy very seriously and understand it. Also, that service Please Rob Me should shut up. In fact, it seems the entire impetus behind Foursquare’s post was Please Rob Me, the mock service set up in an attempt to show the dangers of tweeting out Foursquare check-ins. We, along with several other sites, covered it yesterday. And while it’s hard to take that site itself seriously, it does raise some interesting points. Yes, as Foursquare notes and Mat Honan commented on Gawker yesterday, it’s just as likely that a burglar knows your home is going to be empty from 9 to 5 when you’re at work (provided you have a 9 to 5 job, of course). On The Upside, It Took Foursquare Only 2.5 Months To Double Check-Ins ...
Foursquare has already given the technical reason why they keep going down (uneven database shards), but there must be some other reason why this is coming up right now, right?
Well, it may have something to do with the fact that Foursquare has gone from 100 million check-ins to 200 million in just over two months. The service coyly (and smartly) revealed that stat in the title of this morning’s post about yesterday’s downtime. Sure, part of it is likely a little passive-agressive misdirection, but Foursquare doesn’t bring up the stat again in the entire post. And that’s smart — no one wants to hear you boasting about stats when they can’t use your service. It was only this past July 20, when Foursquare’s Tristan Walker disclosed in a tweet that Foursquare had crossed the 100 million check-in threshold. That kind of rapid ramp up would undoubtedly be difficult for any startup to deal with.
Four Squared Signs You Are a Foursquare Addict. A Couple Websites Battle To Be Mayor Of Foursquare Mayor Battles. While some of the gaming elements of Foursquare have dried up (point leaderboards), mayorships continue to be a hot item.
And now there are not one, but two sites that help you better track mayorships at local venues: When Will I Be Mayor? And Be The Mayor. Be The Mayor is a simple site to show you what you’re up against in terms of becoming the mayor of a specific venue. You enter in the name of a venue (and the city it is in) to search for it, and you’ll be taken to a page that shows you the current mayor and highlights how many more check-ins you’ll need to topple them. There’s also a handy bookmarklet you can use to give you easy access to this data from any Foursquare venue page. When Will I Be Mayor? For those who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, in order to become the mayor of a venue in Foursquare, you have to have the most check-ins (over two) at a venue over the past 60 days (there are a few other elements to it, but that’s basically it). Loopt introduces LooptStar, rehashes ideas from Foursquare. Loopt was the first location-based social app out of the gate for iPhone -- remember that absurd demo with the guy in the double-popped collars?
-- but it was soon passed up by competitors like Foursquare. Now Loopt is playing catchup by introducing LooptStar, a "loyalty card" system that allows businesses to reward repeat customers. Anyone who's used Foursquare will notice that this LooptStar thing smells very familiar. So, what's the difference between LooptStar and Foursquare's discounts?
LooptStar gives companies greater ability to customize their campaigns and offer innovative-- did you just fall asleep? Loopt seems to be pitching its service less as a local discovery engine for people and more as another social-media-whatever that companies just have to have. From a user perspective, LooptStar really does look like a Foursquare ripoff.