FourSquare - A review!

The idea is actually great! FourSquare is a nice and easy way to ad a little fun to everyday life as well as working in comercial angle.

The fun part is you compete with others to be mayor at this place and/or the other. On top of that you compete with yourself to get badges, which also - I guess - gives you a little competition with your friends.

The comercial angle is added when shops, companies, museums and what not offer you something either for simply checking in or being the mayoer at a specific date.

Is it working?
Not by a long shot!!

Why not, what's the problem?
Well, there are several problems, if you ask me!

What are the rules, where is it OK to check in?
"Check in everywhere you feel like on the way from point A to point B".
"You can check in at point A and point B, not every minor stop in between. If you make a stop at a gas station or a shop, then that's OK!"
"You check in at B when you arrive, that's it!"

Who can check in? An example is employees at a shop offering a special to mayors. The employees are there every day and the race for mayorships will soon be an internal race between employees, meaning no customers will ever get the prize.

Should mayorships ships be reset every now and then? This is a valid question when a new special stats. An example is the Central Railway station is Copenhagen, Denmark. This FourSquare user "Daniel B" was (is?) the mayor for months. Nothing could remove him. Obviously he grabbed the title and he hung on to it. My guess is he works in the neighbourhood and he is there every day.
In December DSB had a special. A great special, if you ask me. The one who was mayor at Christmas Eve (or New Years Eve, don't remember) would get a free trip for two by train to Hamburg, Germany.

It didn't take long to figure out that "Daniel B" would be the winner of that Hamburg getaway. With less than a month to become mayor I was "32 days away from becoming the mayor!", and I had been checking in on almost all week days at that time.
DSB scores points for trying, but FourSquare fails by delivering a system that is nowhere near perfect.
It would have made sense to reset the mayor status at the launch of that special, even if the winner is likely to have been found in a very small group of people with "Daniel B" being the favorite to win it.

Another thing that bugs me is the "Whoa! You have checked in a heck of a lot, give others a chance"-like message. If there is not set of rules, no written ethics or a code to play by, why the heck does FourSquare decide when it's too much?

Suggestions to FourSquare:
- Limit check-in by limiting how much a site can be split up. Ex. I suggest you are either at a railway station or not. Forget all that Track 5, Track 10, Ticket Office multiple same-site-check-in. Same goes for Airports, even if it would take some of the fun out of it for travellers.
- Limit check-in by removing the points system. As long as there are ponts, people will check in to anything and create all these sites that are not really sites or sites that are nothing but dublicates but with a different name.
- Be much quicker at responding to reports of dublicate sites. I see ...well, saw so many dublicate sites.
- Make it possible for site owners to reset mayorships at any time they wish to (possibly with a set of guidelines).
- Explain to site owners that employees should not check in if there are specials.
- Figure out how far away you can check in and stick to it. Some places allow check-ins almost 1km away, others not even 300m.


Would it help if these changes were implemented? No! I would not come back. It's still a great idea, but in my view it's impossible to make a system that will make it useable in real life. At least as long as there is an element of competition to it.

I stopped using FourSquare Friday the 28th of January. It's one of my best moves in a long time! No more stress about having to check in! No more stress about having to keep of regain mayorships or stupid points. No more "Aaaw! I forgot to check in!" just when I'm too far away to check in at a place.

"So, you switched to Facebook Places, right?"
Hell no! I've had it with this crap! Plus I would never do something like that on Facebook. Facebook has that "Trailer Trash" label written all over it!