Telling Friends Where You Are (or Not)

In the article, “Telling Friends Where You Are (or Not)” discusses the growing trend of revealing one’s location through applications on a smart phone. More specifically, the article discusses the application Foursquare. Foursquare is an application that allows users to have a list of nearby bars, restaurants and other public locations and reveal to their friends that they are there. The term that Foursquare has been using to catch onto the mainstream is “check in.” It will notify one’s friends that they are in certain location. This form of checking in is different than other tracking applications like Loopt and Google’s Latitude which constantly show one’s location though a map which is visible to a network of friends. The article argues that those applications are not for everyone because it tends to cross a level of privacy that most users do not wish to cross. The article goes on to discuss the history of the application Foursquare. Its predecessor, Dodgeball was sold to google. Dodgeball was a primitive form of “checking in” that sent out a mass text to one’s friends. A text was necessary at the time because most phones did not have GPS capabilities.

The article talks about the ever growing nature of foursquare and its growing number of users (over 500,000). They discuss the possible changes to the culture of smart phone users if “checking in” ever because mainstream. The manufacturers say that as many Twitter users had to incorporate tweeting into their daily lives, Foursquare users are going to need to incorporate “checking in” to their daily lives as well. Furthermore, many already established sites and applications are going to add the checking in feature. Sites such as Facebook and Yelp will soon be adding this feature, which will only expand the growing fan base. Moreover, business can capitalize on this growing craze by featuring coupons to users, which will only further advertise their business and the application.

I feel as if this new wave of “checking in” will be interesting as it hits the mainstream. It will definitely change how social networking and communication will be. It will make a world much more sociable. Having the ability to let people know where you are will make encounters and interactions much more frequent. The best part, however, is having a choice of when to “check in” and who to check in with. This enables someone to be alone when they want to be alone and be sociable when they want to be sociable. I personally have not tried any application that allows others to see my location or allow me to see a friends location, but it will be interesting to see how this new wave hits mainstream smart phone users.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/technology/15locate.html

Paul Idos

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