Page 219 - Social Media Marketing

Once you’ve checked in, you’ll see a list of your friends also using Foursquare 197
who are nearby, along with tips about the place you’ve checked into. The tips are one
of the first big “value adds” of Foursquare. Checking into a restaurant, you can see ■ BEST PRACTICES IN SOCIAL BUSINESS
what’s good (or alternatively, what’s good that is right across the street). Checking in
at a grocery store alerts others in your friends’ list that you’re there—and they can ping
you to ask you to pick up some milk (since you actually know each other, the relative
tolerance for such an imposition is known by both parties) and thereby save your friend
a needless trip in the car.

Sharing Location Data

Foursquare and Twitter both allow you to follow people, and allow others to follow you.
Unlike Twitter’s basic posting features, however, that let followers know what you are doing,
Foursquare tells them where you are. This means it’s also telling people where you aren’t. If you
check in at a movie theater, it means you aren’t going to be home for about 2 hours.

Rather than uninstalling the application, this means you need to think about your own follower/
following and “friending” policies. Location-sharing applications raise the bar in this regard.
My good friend Susan Bratton talked of the “gluttonous social behavior” many have engaged
in—amassing thousands of followers simply because they could. Many are now rethinking that
behavior.

Before accepting a follow request with location-sharing tools, take a minute (or more…) to think
through the potential impact of what you are sharing. Twitter has taught that not everyone really
wants to know what everyone else is doing right now. Foursquare may teach that even fewer
people want anyone to know where they are doing it.

Foursquare: Beyond Meetups

The Dachis Group’s Peter Kim takes the possible social business applications for Foursquare fur-
ther, extending the application well beyond simple meetups and check ins. You can read more
about Peter and Foursquare here:

http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2009/11/foursquare-social-business-design.html