Dancing with Foursquare: The fun of location-based apps

On its face, Foursquare seems a waste of time.

You already tweet and follow businesses. You fan your favorite organizations on Facebook. Why do you need to check in on Foursquare?

Foursquare uses geolocation to share information about places. You check in when you go to a building or business, and you get awarded points for accomplishing tasks. If you go to a place enough times, you can become the “mayor” of the place in Foursquare. (Like Google Buzz and Yelp, it makes a bit more sense as a mobile app on your smartphone.) You can also earn other badges, such as the Swarm badge (at left) I got for checking in at Central Park on July 4th.

So why share your location with the world and spend all this time checking in?

• Earn specials. If you check in enough times at a business that’s playing along, you can earn specials, such as free drinks, discounts, and other prizes.
• Learn about new places. If you’re new a business, people often leave “tips” behind for others to find. For example, my favorite coffee shop in Springfield is Mudhouse. But in 13 years as a customer, I never knew the place had a drink called the White Panther.
  
• Compile a list of things to do. When you discover such tips, perhaps you want to save them for later. Foursquare allows you to build a list from captivating tips you find on your travels.
• Find your friends. You can choose to limit your check-in visibility to your friends. If you check in nearby one of those Foursquare friends, he or she will get a phone notification about your proximity.
• Share insights with others. When you check in, you can leave a message of up to 140 characters (a la Twitter) about why you’re there. You can also leave your own tips for others to find.

Foursquare also integrates seamlessly with Twitter and Facebook, so if you want to alert the world to your whereabouts, you can link the social-networking sites. Savvy social-media types rarely enable this function, however. The updates flood your streams, and few people care if you become mayor of certain locales.

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