Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

So Foursquare has been up and running in Vancouver here for awhile now and most of us here at Engine have had an opportunity to take it for a test drive.

The general consensus though seems to be that it’s: ANNOYING! There’s been all sorts of debate around the studio, and even a couple scraps on Twitter, as to the value of the new-to-Vancouver application.

The Engine development team seemed intent on exposing the ludicrous nature of Foursquare by scheming their own location based tool called TwoCircles that was for pinging your actual location in relation to what web page you were looking at:

I am currently on www.google.ca Looking for a website. #twocircles
- 9:46 AM Sep 11th via Tweetie

Beyond the general up in arms silliness of letting people constantly know where you are, the biggest gripe stemmed from check-ins showing up in the feeds of unsuspecting Twitter users because of the initial excitement over being able to ping Twitter with location tweets via Foursquare when new users first installed the app and started going nuts with the thing.

Gotta say, as a Twitter user not using foursquare, theres no value in me seeing your foursquare posts. None. Sorry. Its getting annoying.
- 7:46 PM Sep 17th from Tweetie

Sorry Stephen! Once we all figured out what we were doing though, most of us seemed to get things under control by shutting the ping to Twitter setting off. Except me, I’m still tweeting my locations. I don’t see the point really in using Foursquare if I can’t send that information to my Twitter followers. The entire crux of Twitter is “What are you doing?” So why wouldn’t I want to share the minute details of my existence with my legion of fans?! (and I assure you, dear reader, there are many!) So here’s my tip to smooth over the yet to be impressed types: Don’t just tell people where you are, offer something along with it. It’s a conversation afterall, remember? And who wants to listen to a boring one, “I’m at Waterfront Station” isn’t very intriguing and sounds like spam when a Twitter user sees it over and over again. However, offering some delicious insight about where you are will make you worth listening to. For example:

The paintings that line the ceiling are tops (@ Waterfront Station in Vancouver)
- 9:00 AM Sep 21st from foursquare

Ok, so now that we’re not pissing everyone off by offering insightful musings about the world around us, what now? Well, as I alluded to earlier about location based networking being a lucrative application for businesses, the guys at Foursquare have just released a guide outlining the incentives for business owners with Foursquare’s relation to real world restaurants, bars, and other venues. The aspiration being that checking-in at your favorite pub will serve you up some sort screen-coupon for something free. What business isn’t looking to increase customer loyalty and repeat visits? Make no mistake, Foursquare has that ability, not to mention a new take on word of mouth advertising when you check-in to your favorite diner booth and it gets broadcast to your 100+ followers. Also, it looks like there’s stats for business owners in the works too. Who’s coming to your establishment? Where were they before they were there? How long are they staying? Etc.

Again, this is new technology. We’re interested, and we’re watching. We’ll be reporting on Foursquare’s development often. But for now, in true “marketing guy” style, I’ll leave you with three tips:

1) Don’t just check in. (Yawn, boring. Who cares.) Say something about the place, or how you’re feeling. We totally care. That’s why we follow you, right?

2) Don’t check in constantly. We realize it’s a game, but if you’re a real pro, and traversing the tricky waters of cross platform check-in’s you might want to think about that strive to be mayor of Shoppers Drug Mart.

3) Finally. Don’t be annoying. I really can’t help you with this one, some people just are. (unfollow)

Oh, and let’s be careful out there.

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