Practicum #2 - Amber

I find it really interesting how foursquare works. While it is hooked up to a GPS within my cell phone, often times the location my phone thinks I am in is not quite accurate, to the point that different areas of my own apartment (which is not that large) convinces foursquare I have changed streets entirely. The other component I find interesting is that everyone using it is quite honest. You could in theory check in to almost anywhere in the greater Madison area and foursquare wouldn't tell me I wasn't there, but that would be cheating. I would get badges I didn't deserve, and in theory, why would you want to say you went to somewhere you never were? Many of the specials I've seen are at bars and restaurants, and occasionally places like a yoga studio or clothing store. They range from the mayor getting a free soda when they check in and buy a slice of pizza to 25 check-ins get you a free training session. This is great for business, and I can say I have seen this in action when this summer a friend of mine and I saw where someone had checked in for brunch in NYC and read on Twitter that they got free drinks with their meal. We were hooked and went there, and would have never known that the place existed besides that check-in.

The above image is of what one's friend list looks like on your foursquare profile. You can add a profile image, as well as other stats about yourself. While you do put a general location online, it changes with gps when you move. foursquare was very smart in that they made it so you can link your account to your Facebook and Twitter, not just to find friends, but also to share your foursquare information. While you can set it up to have every check-in publish to your other social networking sites, I've chosen to have to manually select to have them publish the information. I have yet to send it to Facebook, because I think when they post it there with a map it seems excessive, but Twitter is kind of fun depending on the location because it is sort of like your "status" update, I would often Tweet where I was or what I was doing. I think it is really smart of the site to utilize other social networking sites and devices, since what you can do with foursquare is, in theory, pretty basic. With this, you can "shout" just on foursquare, which is adding a comment to your location that will show up on foursquare as well as these other sites if you choose. The foursquare website makes it easy to see where your friend are and keep up with your profile stats, but since the idea of the site is so much about being "on-the-go" I find myself relying far more on the cell phone application than the online website.