From The Rooftops

Checking Out the New Foursquare Checkin

Foursquare, the popular social location (SoLo) app (or, as they describe themselves “[…] your favorite, er, mobile + social + friend finder + social city guide + nightlife game thing.”) has just turned one year old. While their growth has been astronomical, there have been some fundamental growing pains that we’ve all seen on the horizon for some time. [note: if you’re not familiar with Foursquare, I’d encourage you to read up here]

While there is much to be said about the way PleaseRobMe pithily encapsulated the privacy and safety issues surrounding the broadcasting of one’s location, I’d like to think out loud about a different issue that has been an elephant in the room that we’ve all been checking into: cheating (or, as Foursquare charitably puts it, “armchair mayors”).

I think it’s safe to say that one of the main reasons that Foursquare has taken off in the social location space is the way that they have made a very clever and fun social game out of the act of the checkin. (to be sure, Gowalla is still very much a player and I’ll be interested to see how the two services [and any other entrants] come to adapt to—and shape—the market and the realm of possibilities in this category) When I first introduce people to the rules and dynamics of Foursquare I often hear the inevitable question: So what’s to stop you from checking in somewhere you haven’t actually been? To which the usual response is: “…but why would you do that? If the basic idea is to let your friends know where you are and where you’ve been, what would be the point of sharing a location that you’re not actually occupying?” The next observation, of course, is to acknowledge that, as Foursquare gains popularity and adoption by businesses, the incentive to fudge one’s location history will become increasingly tempting.

Two of the more common incentives that businesses have come to extend revolve around either discounts every time you show the cashier that you checked in, or a freebie of some sort for the person who is the mayor. While ‘armchair checkins’ won’t mean much to the former category, it can certainly be an issue with the latter. Indeed, the more a mayorship is worth, the greater the likelihood that people will start to feel the temptation to overstate their attendance. In other words, we’ve known that this is a longstanding concern and, as the number of participants increase, the more competitive and contested the whole thing will become.

The problem with Foursquare’s current solution (explained here) is that it’s quite dependent upon two interrelated things that are far from dependable: the accuracy of your phone’s GPS system (or the Foursquare team’s “tricks” for non-GPS phones) and the likelihood that the person who first created the location was standing near the same place as you when you checked in.

I find myself wondering how well this will work for something like a baseball stadium—the same venue might occupy several city blocks—Foursquare will need to come up with a clever solution to this issue. Venue creation is necessarily a product of crowdsourcing, so it’s hard to have a definitive notion of the true extent of a venue’s dimensions. Perhaps they can attribute greater ‘locational leniency’ to venues racking up major checkins?

What about the average coffee shop? I’ve long thought that, as checkins become increasingly contested, venues might start utilizing a checkin code—a short sequence of numbers or letters that, like a changing wi-fi password, is given to you by the cashier when you buy your coffee. It makes cheating a lot harder and, since the Foursquare user is already sure to be stopping by the cashier for their order and the wi-fi password, they’re not put too far out of their way in the process.

Consider the alternative:—just the other day I was chatting with a guy who, while standing at the front door of a coffee shop, had his checkin flagged as being a cheat. He was frustrated not only at the prospect of being deprived of the checkin points (and the potential to close-in on the existing mayor), but was also peeved at the accusation of being dishonest. The experience left such a bad taste in his mouth that he’s since stopped using the app. (note: they do have a cheater code error form for such instances, but I don’t expect many people to go out of their way to fill out a survey every time Foursquare accuses them of cheating).

What I find myself wondering is how this will impact Foursquare’s rate of adoption (and attrition). Because it now requires users to be more precise with their game participation (no more checkins ex post facto) I can see two things happening: frustrated at the increased barrier to participation, some users, disheartened at the loss of points and increased attentiveness required by the new developments, find themselves reducing their investment and ultimately quitting; the committed users who ‘played by the rules’ all along begin to gain more mayorships and rank on the leaderboard as the “armchair mayors” drop like flies.

It will ultimately be a positive development for Foursquare if these two developments come to pass, but only if the company feels it has the momentum to stay ahead of Gowalla, Loopt, Yelp and any other entrants on the horizon. Or, to put it another way, if the SoLo market has, thus far, only seen early adopters (read: more tech-savvy, more willing to deal with UX issues), we can expect that the incoming early majority users might be less amenable to such issues and Foursquare had better get it figured out well—and quickly.  It is a precarious endeavor to advocate integrity without sacrificing liberty and enjoyment (indeed, if Foursquare gets it right, they’re likely to have a few politicians [not to mention developers] knocking on their door, asking how it was done), but if they’ve demonstrated anything, the folks at Foursquare have shown that they’re a team of smart, creative and innovative folks—in other words, precisely the sort of people one would expect to do it right.

What are your thoughts? Am I overstating the significance of these moves? What about the varying sizes of venues–how can Foursquare distinguish between large and small venues (if it even needs to)? How about a checkin code–will that be too much to expect of a Foursquare user? I’d love to hear from you, so hit the comments!

- Caleb