tea while reading a newspaper at your local cafe, when someone you've never before seen interrupts your morning respite by hollering your name from the
next table. You look up to see them waving frantically, leading you to wonder
if one too many tequila shots were the cause of this temporary amnesia. Before
you can question the acquaintance, they simply say hold up their iPhone and
say: "Foursquare!"
Far-fetched? Nope, just another day in Web 2.0. This exact scenario
actually happened this weekend, a result of social network foursquare's recent
update: the ability to see who else is checked into a venue. Foursquare - for
those not familiar - is a location-based social network where users 'check in'
to venues as a way to gain points (currently an nonredeemable social currency)
and explore the city. Most users take advantage of the iPhone and Android apps
as a quick way to see what their friends are doing at any given time. Because
it requires action on your part to check in, people seem to find it a bit less
creepy than other similar apps, and the incentives to gain badges, points, and
become the 'Mayor' at a venue are helping it gain popularity, especially here
in SF. However this new feature, packaged as part of a multi-part update in
their recent 1.4 release, may rub some users the wrong way.
Basically, the issue is maintaining some sense of anonymity,
something that many of us on the Web find increasingly challenging. One feature that many people liked about
foursquare was that it allowed for a more insular, protected network because,
as with other social networking sites, you have to approve your friends for
them to gain access to your information. Because this app takes it one step further
by broadcasting your current location, users often were even more selective in
their friend choices than they would be on Twitter or Facebook. And for many of
those in the public realm (read: internet 'celebrities'), broadcasting their
location was something they wanted to do in a controlled manner. With this
update, however, people who you haven't chosen to be friends with now have
access to your location. Which, not to exaggerate, can be seen as potentially
threatening at worst, mildly creepy at best.
Before you abandon the app altogether, privacy aficionados, here's a
few solutions. The most overarching one is to opt out of showing your
name on the "Who's here" list; you can easily do this in your Settings.
While this takes away from the ability to let
users discover new friends on the system, it does protect those who
want to
keep their location private to anyone but their friends. You
can also turn off the now-misleading "Tell My Friends" setting on a
case-by-case basis as you're checking in. While not a global solution,
this will show your friends that you've
checked in but are 'off the grid', thus protecting your location and
removing
it from the list of people showing up at the venue. Dennis Crowley,
co-Founder of foursquare, also promises a few more privacy changes
coming soon.
Hopefully,
foursquare will rename "Tell My Friends" to something more
representative like "Share my Location", since I'm assuming many legacy
users may have missed this subtle, yet important, update. (Crowley
himself weighs in on this suggestion, saying that it's something
they're looking into for a future release.) In the meantime, check in
with caution...you never know who
may be screaming your name from across the bar.
