Here’s my take on etiquette using location-based social platforms. Since I’ve only used Foursquare on my Blackberry 8820, well.. that’s what I’ll talk about. I finally dived into Foursquare when I caught wind that it came out with a BB app. It was exciting and also a bit confusing. I don’t go out much (family guy with little kids at home), so there aren’t many opportunities for me to “check in”. So; in order to participate I started checking in to places on my normal commute to and from work. It felt weird since I realized that I can easily become mayor of these places. It seemed like an unfair advantage.

I found it very odd that I couldn’t find any guidance on Foursquare’s web site. I guess they wanted the guidelines to evolve on its own through the users. I did a Google search for “foursquare etiquette” and I’ve listed some sites below that do a good job spelling out the Do’s and Don’ts of checking in.

My Do’s and Don’ts

  • When you check in, don’t post EVERYTHING to Twitter and Facebook. It’s bad enough people get junk posts in their feed all the time. Don’t become an enabler. Post it within the Foursquare environment – it was meant to take that kind of abuse.
  • Configure your settings to only post to Twitter and Facebook once you’ve achieved badges or mayorship. This way, people will be exposed to the application, but not burdened by your constant check ins.
  • Don’t check in at home or work. You will become mayor and it’s definitely an unfair advantage. No one will be able to catch up to you.

Ha-ha. I thought I’d have more, but that’s my list. Check out the references below for more detailed lists.

References

  1. http://www.oldmedianewtricks.com/foursquare-etiquette-guide/ – this site’s post dominates the search results.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 10:27 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.