Nerve Endings Firing Away

I nearly quit FourSquare last week. Not because of the privacy concerns that suddenly everyone realized they were subject to in the social networking world but because I didn’t really see the point of it all ^[1]. FourSquare is a geolocation-based ‘game’ where you ‘check-in’ at places you go to and based on certain factors, you are awarded points. If you frequent a place often enough, you are anointed the Mayor. Currently, I’m the Mayor of Kroger Co Store 383 and Barnes and Noble in Bryan and College Station respectively. In metro cities, restaurants, bars, and other business offer special discounts to frequent customers based on their FourSquare ‘badges’ in order to make you frequent them often and boost business. Currently, no such offers or promotions are available in my town hence my decision to leave it. ^[2]

However, people are quitting or not joining FourSquare citing privacy reasons. This gained momentum when a site, PleaseRobMe.com hypothesized that based on your check-ins at other places, you indicated that you are not at home and hence vulnerable to burglary. At face value, it makes sense but if you think about it, it is ridiculous. Aren’t you already tweeting your current activities outside your home or updating your Facebook status and uploading photos when you are at a party away from home? So how is FourSquare any different? Andy Baio unearthed similar concerns about answering machines on your home telephone and newspaper funeral service announcements in the 70s and 80s. As far as I know, unlike Google Latitude, FourSquare doesn’t place a roving GPS tracker on you broadcasting your movements across the city and visible to all especially Jack Bauer. In fact, the GPS locator used by FourSquare isn’t even all that accurate and often while adding venues, it places me smack in the middle of the Texas A&M Drill Field when in fact, I’m a mile away at a restaurant. Taking advantage of these shortcomings, people have even appointed themselves as the Mayor of North Pole ^[3]. You have the freedom to check-in or not wherever you go and there is no compulsion to check-in every day. And just because you checked in at Great Clips on Sunday morning doesn’t mean your wife isn’t at home.

So like any social networking tool you are using, there are a few things you should and should not do if you value your privacy. Gawker has covered quite a few and I’m adding a few more:

• Don’t add random strangers as friends: Since you are sending out information about the places you frequent, you can be more selective in adding friends than say, on your Twitter list. In fact, I have found people from other countries trying to ‘friend’ me on FourSquare baffling because you don’t have the same restaurants, or stores so even the recommendations angle doesn’t work. I removed a bunch of people that I had added earlier and I hope they don’t take it personally. I don’t. But then adding out of town ‘friends’ should assuage your privacy concerns, right? As in real life, in two words – choose wisely.
• Don’t check in from work: Becoming a mayor of your workplace is not just lame but sad. I’m sure your boss will not include your FourSquare checkins in your annual review. And these check-ins are the privacy holes that you should keep away from.
• Don’t check in from home or your friend’s place: After work, don’t go home and check-in at home with a message saying, you are glad to be at home. That in fact is where PleaseRobMe directly applies and perhaps you deserve to be robbed. Of course, being a Mayor of your own home is even more lame than being the Mayor of your workplace. While you are at it, extend the privacy courtesy to your friend by not checking-in to his home while you are visiting. Not only is it rude but also a gross violation of someone else’s privacy especially if he is not on FourSquare. Did I mention that the pinnacle of lameness is being the Mayor of your friend’s home?
• Don’t check-in from places you don’t want ‘friends’ to know about: This is so obvious that I hesitated to include it. But then again, don’t underestimate the stupidity of people. Some feel compelled to indulge in their social networking habits so a specific tip like this makes them feel less guilty.

The rules are pretty simple and easy to follow to avoid being a FourSquare jerk. In spite of that, if you have friends who have visited your home and know that you are out and then proceed to rob you, you have larger problems than a FourSquare profile.

Footnotes:

1. @desinole says that he uses it to keep a list of places he visits. I agree that if used judiciously, it provides excellent patterns and trends in the places you frequent [↩]
2. I eventually returned after finding that Yelp!, the business-review site that also offers check-ins wasn’t as intuitive. [↩]
3. Reliable sources tell me it is definitely not Santa Claus [↩]