I've been prompted to start using Facebook and Twitter more often. I feel like I have been introduced to a very interesting and even awkward form of communication or connecting. To say the least, Facebook has been around for years now. I've had a Facebook account since High School, but never used it because of multiple reasons. The public visibility of who "I am" or "Jamal Davis" is, bothered me. Also, constantly knowing what other people are doing or saying didn’t really interest me. These concepts and features are just two of the reasons, however, there are many more. I’ll talk about these forms of technology and communication later…but I digress.
Anyway, we are talking about Foursquare. I recently stumbled upon this "game" recently through a "friends" Facebook page. I'm not familiar with Foursquare but it seems like a nifty way to compete, connect, and consume with the environment around you. You can see where your friends are eating, have eaten, and how many times they have eaten at a certain place. These search and conquer features are also available for businesses and entertainment venues around your given city or neighborhood.
It seems like a really cool feature. As I take a step back and look at this social networking game, I start to think about the game like interactions that we have in life which are being made even more visible through this game and the social networking sites that are available to us now. Have these types of games been played often and have been capitalized on by websites like this? Or, have these wants and needs to frequent a place, and see how many times you can go in a month always been a desire of ours?
I'm going with the latter on of these. I think that we have always had a little desire to claim a place as our own or search our city to find new places and share it with friends. I think that Foursquare is a great idea an easy enough to do.
So I suggest you try it out...and tell me how it goes for you. Because, I haven’t tried it out yet. I mean being in Vermont wouldn’t really be the best place for a testing ground, right?
I created a Foursquare account a while back, but just recently started using it again. Sadly, the only places I've been 'checking in' at are the library, Axinn, and Twilight. I don't know a lot of people who use Foursquare, but it seems like the app would do more if friends were actually using it. I hesitated to use the it because of privacy reasons; it seemed a bit stalkerish, but I guess if you're 'checking in' in the first place, you want people to know where you are. I guess the good thing is that Foursquare does have an option to do a 'private check-in,' so that works for those who don't want their check-ins to be seem, but want to participate in the whole collecting badges, game part of it. I think I'm going to try and check in everywhere I go and see how it all works out at the end of the month.
ReplyDeleteFoursquare definitely doesn't seem like great app in the small rural college setting but hey, you never know. Like you said the more people that use it the better, and if everyone used it then it could be a fun game. The part of getting badges makes the mundane things of our lives that more interesting. For example, you going to the library, if you go enough, you can become the mayor of the library. You've just made going to the library not only productive for homework but for your progression in the digital sphere of Foursquare. Please update us (middstateofmind readers) updated on your findings!
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