Foursquare: Come for the Games, Stay for the Memories

Today is Foursquare Day, which seemed to be a good time to take a look at how Foursquare has changed recently, and how that's affected my use of it.

Recently, Foursquare has explained that the "game" aspect of the service had been too prominent, and what they really wanted to emphasize was "search" -- helping users discover interesting places to go.

Given that I originally got interested in Foursquare as a game, this is not a good development. Particularly since it has never been a great game. The points system has never been that interesting. The mayorships, while interesting, are too open to cheating. The badges have probably been my favorite part of the game. Now that the mayorships and badges no longer post to Twitter and Foursquare, even that is less exciting -- bragging about "accomplishments" has always been part of the appeal. The only people who will see that I got the "Zoetrope" badge are those who happen to look on Foursquare.

And there are fewer of those friends. I have 12 friends on Foursquare. Two have never checked in. Three last checked in during 2010. Of the remaining seven, only three have checked in this year.

I use the "Explore" feature some -- mainly because I hope they have slightly better data on what places people actually go to than something like Google Maps does. I don't know that it's compelling enough for me to continue checking in, particularly since I can "Explore" without doing so. (I don't think the data about where I have checked in will be all that useful for making recommendations.)

So why do I still check in every day? Well, as I previously described, I am very much interesting in collecting data that I can use to jog my memory and answer the question of what I was doing on a particular date. I still use Timehop to discover what I was doing a year ago today (and I still wish it told me what I was doing two and three years ago.)

This came together in an amazing way just over a week ago. I was reminded of a year-ago series of checkins including a toy store and a JC Penney. That brought back memories of foam swords we had bought the boys, pushing the stroller around JC Penney in a desperate attempt to calm them down, and discovering that one of the two swords had gone missing. (The toy store had sold out of them by the time we went back and said they weren't getting any back in stock.) Since we can't have just one of any toy if we expect to keep the peace (and since I found it too depressing just to throw it away), the sword lived in my car for a year.

I reflected on that to start the day, then Christina and I had our first real date of the year -- the kind of day that I'll really enjoy looking back upon in 2014. Since the babysitter was engaged for a fixed period of time, we had half an hour to kill at the end of the date. Of all places, we ended up in Walgreen's. We walked in, and there was a display with the exact type of sword that had gone missing a year ago. Weird.

Anyway, my quest for "gamification" of daily life has moved beyond Foursquare -- mostly to Untappd, a beer check-in service. But I'm still enjoying Foursquare, almost entirely as a way of capturing the aspect of my history, "Where was I on such-and-such a date?"

Postcards from 2011

I find myself thinking wistfully of that place in time, say, not three years ago, when teenage bedrooms again sprouted daisy stickers and when Grunge ruled the catwalks. On another level, I think of when the imperative to become "wired" hadn't yet so much filled the world's workforce with dark dreams of low-tech paranoia and security-free obsolescence. It's been a busy half-decade.

--Douglas Coupland, Polaroids from the Dead, 1996

These words -- or at least the ideas they contain  --  have stuck with me for more than fifteen years. Coupland's first and most well-known work, Generation X, is subtitled Tales for an Accelerated Culture, so it makes sense that he would be among the first to notice that life had sped up to the point that a person in 1996 could experience nostalgia for 1993. I remember reading it and thinking, "Wow, he's right."

Now, in 2012, I get an e-mail every day from a service called Timehop. It was originally called "Foursquare and 7 Years Ago" and would tell me what places I had checked into a year previously. Now, it includes updates from Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook.

Given the service's previous name, I had hoped that when my Foursquare account turned two, I would start to get updates going back more than one year. Alas, that's not the case. Today, for example, I found out that last year I took a picture of the boys in their Star Trek onesies and picked up dinner from Noodles & Company. I was not, however, informed that on February 3, 2010, I was at Safeway stocking up before another massive snowstorm, nor that I picked up dinner at Boston Market due to our ongoing kitchen renovation.

I did not learn that 3 years ago today, the odometer on my CR-V hit 100,000 miles. Nobody told me that in 2008 I ordered two calzones from Rastie's. I had to dig through my e-mail to learn that five years ago today, I posted a session report from a game of "Up Front". And it saddens me to report that I have absolutely no idea what I was up to on February 3, 2006. Oh, wait. I posted something about how my go rating had just reached 23 kyu. (It's at 14 kyu now.)  Also, Christina and I appear to have been in California.

But, still!  What about 2005? I was staying at the Doubletree in Del Mar, so there's that. 2004? I had an appointment with my allergist, who said I could stay with one allergy shot per month. (I'm now back at one every three weeks.) In 2003, Christina e-mailed me to ask what I wanted for dinner. I requested chicken tacos, but I don't know if we actually had them. OK, once I get to 2002, I have no immediately available information about that day. (On February 3, 1992, I was up at 6 am from the night before because I was playing the Civilization computer game, and I still had a homework problem to finish. And the previous evening's dinner to eat.)

My point (if I still have one), is that while I enjoy reveling in the past (and would love to have a record of February 3, 1982), that's not the way the world works these days. The three-year nostalgia Coupland identified in 1996 has become quaint. (Remember when we had three-year-nostalgia? That was awesome.) Now, a year ago constitutes the good old days, and beyond that -- it's best not to think about.

Foursquare takes it to another level

In January 2010, and January of this year, I wrote about foursquare, and how I was enjoying its "gamification" of my everyday travels. I was going to save another reflection on the topic until January 2012, but this week foursquare introduced a new game feature that I'd like to take time to consider -- badge levels.

In January, I said that the badges -- icons given as rewards for certain types of checkins -- were probably my favorite part. Unfortunately, after you play for a while, you collect most of the badges that you're going to see, and that part of the game stagnates. Occasionally, it provides for some fun -- when I was in London in September, I was desperately trying to connect to the ferry's wi-fi network to unlock the "I'm On a Boat" badge. But most of the badges fell into the categories of easy or too hard.

Foursquare has revamped that by introducing the concept of levels for what they are calling their 24 "expertise" badges. Now not only do you unlock the "Ski Bum" badge for going skiing a few times, but you have the potential to get up to 10th Level Ski Bum by hitting (I think) 45 different ski areas.

They combined this change with the introduction of a few new expertise badges and the standardization of rules for the old expertise badges. I think the way they are handling retroactive qualification is by recalculating levels for badges you already have, but waiting to award new badges until the next qualifying check-in.

For example, when they made the changes, I ended up as a 3rd Level Jetsetter, 1st Level Swimmies, 2nd Level Bookworm, and 1st Level Baker's Dozen. (OK, I'm going to have to work on terminology here.)

Today, however, when I checked in at California Tortilla, I was immediately promoted to 5th Level Hot Tamale -- as a result of checking in at 20 different "Mexican spots". I went back and looked, and I could only find 19. Seven of them are fast-food type places, so that seems a little funny, but I guess it counts. For the record, 11 are in Maryland, 7 in California and 1 in Delaware.

I guess this points to how the game portion of foursquare works better than the recommendation aspect. Supposedly the concept of levels was developed partially to signal whose tips you should take more seriously. But for all I know, the 10th Level Hot Tamale has been to 45 different Taco Bells, in which case I really don't want to take his advice.

The concept of badge levels is not original -- I've seen in on Untappd (aka foursquare for beer), but I think it'll promote more foursquare use, more exploration ("ooh, if I check into a new pizza place, I can level up") and most importantly, more fun.

Foursquare, reconsidered

A year ago today, I wrote a post about this new site called "Foursquare" I had started using. At the time, none of my friends were using it, so that dampened my enthusiasm.  Well, a year later, I'm still using and enjoying it.  Here are my reflections after a year:

• Being mayor is cool, but a majority of places I'm mayor of, I have a very tenuous hold on -- someone visiting two days in a row could knock me out.  
• I like saying I'm the mayor of a park or a good restaurant, but less so a grocery store or a gas station.  As the parent of twin infants, I find my opportunity to visit places frequently to be fairly diminished.  That should pick up again as they get more mobile.
• Nobody cares about Foursquare points.  They need to revamp them or get rid of them.
• By April, five of my friends had started using Foursquare, and when Christina started in May, it became a lot more interesting.  Sometimes, seeing where people check in interests me more than a Facebook status update.
• I still haven't used it for a spontaneous meeting with a friend.  I think it promises a lot of, "Hey, so-and-so is at the bar down the street, let's meet up," but at my age and place in life that isn't going to happen.  As I said last year, "I could see this being pretty neat 15 years ago in grad school."
• The badges are awesome.  I think they're my favorite part -- I especially enjoy generating badge envy.  Some badges I'm envious of: Just Desserts, Historian, and for some reason most of all, I'm on a Boat!
• They've addressed the cheating pretty well, especially with the recent requirement to use a location-aware phone for check-in.  It would have prevented me from getting any mayorships and badges from last January to April on my old Palm Treo, but I guess the world moves on.
• It would really help if the game got more developed.  For now, as long as they release more badges, I'll be pretty happy, but the whole real world meets digital gaming nexus probably needs more dimensions to take off.

How I Became Mayor of Noodles & Company

I like playing with new web concepts when I come across them. Sometimes they take off -- Blogger, Facebook. Sometimes they don't -- Movielens and Wikitravel Extra are two that come to mind.

I read an article about Foursquare and decided to give it a try. It's sort of...I don't know, a cross between Facebook and Waymarking? When you travel to actual locations (for example, bars and restaurants), you use your smartphone to "check in", and Foursquare will tell you which of your friends are nearby. Furthermore, you earn "points" for checking in, and you earn "badges" for certain types of check-ins. Also, if you're the person who checks in the most at a particular location, you are declared "mayor" of that location.

Fortunately, this impulse to try Foursquare coincided with our kitchen renovation, so I have lots of reasons to go out to get food and "check in".

So what are my impressions?

• Advantage 1: It's social networking that involves getting off your butt and in front of the computer. Instead of sitting at home and posting Facebook updates, Foursquare actually encourages you to get out of the house and do things.
  
• Disadvantage 1: Advantage 1 is completely negated, if, like me, none of your friends are on Foursquare.
  
• Disadvantage 2: Even if they were, none of us are in the "Hey, let's head out on the town and see who we run into" phase of our lives. I could see this being pretty neat 15 years ago in grad school. But then again, none of us would probably have been able to afford smartphones.
  
• Advantage 2: It's a game, but one that rewards you for getting out of the house. If I'm willing to sit at home and click away to earn virtual achievements in Farmville and Mafia Wars, why wouldn't I be willing to "check in" four days in a row to earn the "Bender" badge? (How far I fall from the target demographic is summarized by the message: "Bender That's 4+ nights in a row for you! Unlocked by Jon G. on Sun Jan 17, 2010 at 10:54 AM @ Bagel Place - College Park in College Park.")
  
• Disadvantage 3: It's not a particularly well-developed game. As far as I tell, you can achieve three things in the game. First, you can get the aforementioned badges (apparently, there are some more specialized ones, such as "gym rat" for visiting gyms a lot). Second, you can become mayor. (The only place I've "checked in" more than once is Noodles & Co., hence my possession of the mayoralty there.) Finally, you get "points" every week. There's a leaderboard, which I seem only to access from the mobile web site. I am #1 among my friends (since nobody else uses foursquare), and not in the top #100 in the DC metro area. Yay?
  
• Disadvantage 4: It's pretty easy to cheat. While I appreciate the fact that I can check in via the web from my 2007 vintage, non-location-aware smartphone, foursquare should probably eventually move towards something better locked down. Why would someone want to cheat at foursquare? I don't know, but sadly, every pointless web-based game I've ever seen has drawn some people who want to cheat for whatever reason.
  

In conclusion, the game is sort of interesting, but they probably need to spruce it up a little bit if it's going to have any staying power. The interaction of the virtual world and the real world is promising, but I'm not sure if they're poised to take advantage of it. Maybe someone else will do a better job and create something that's a better fit.

I'll probably keep "playing" at least until I earn the superuser badge -- that's 30 checkins in one month. At that point, I'll be able to point out duplicate listings -- it's kind of driving me crazy that one neighborhood restaurant appears four times. I'm not sure that's enough incentive to keep me sticking with it a month from now.