I know I am a bad person. Late on facebook, not really active on twitter and clearly NOT on Foursquare.
Why ?
I guess it’s because I am old.
At the very beginning of Internet, one of its magic was that you could be anyone or someone. Privacy was not even in question. It was just the way it used to be.
Because there are some side effects of being anonymous and also because it is was more interesting from a commercial stand point to know you, we moved to a new era. You are who you are on Internet nowadays. Moved from content to contact.
The next part is less interesting from a personal point of view (of course way more interesting from a marketing point of view). Knowing who you are and where you are is a radical step. Even in the wet dreams of bad marketers from the 80′s, no one was expecting people to love telling everything
http://pleaserobme.com/ is of course a perfect demonstration of why I dislike Foursquare. From contact to context
But because the concept was not sticky enough, Foursquare introduced badges/achievement couple of months ago. The ‘fun’ factor. Or read more carefully : how to make the user looks cooler (or more like an idiot) by geotagging his whole (pathetic) life by detailing every steps of his day. Even with friends, I dont give a shit to where they had lunch today. Just give me a break, leave me more privacy not only for me but for the people I know (by the way is there a 4square filter in FB ?).
I know I am wrong. The future will show me that millions of people love to be tracked and bombarded by messages. Sometimes I just wish I could be right.
For a similar point of view, go check here http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-social-networking-site-changing-the-way-…