I was recently talking to a friend who had not begun to partake in Foursquare and was trying to explain it. She was excited, but then had a few questions fundamental questions about it.
It got me thinking about what Foursquare talks about being and what people generally use it for.
From Foursquare itself, there isn’t much of an indication what it’s used for. Sure, there’s a learn more page about Foursquare, but really, despite giving the how, that doesn’t say why.
Yes, it does say that you can meet friends out at places, but sadly, there still aren’t many people who use the geolocation service, mostly because of the fact it is a geolocation service. Obviously, there are major privacy concerns and with recent events like Facebook’s recent privacy woes, a lot of people can get scared quiet easily.
Personally, the only time I’ve gotten a text from someone in my area, was when I was traveling up to Boston, and a friend noticed that I had checked into the bus station just before him. And even so, we couldn’t meet up at the time. It was so close to being a Foursquare meet up.
What Foursquare quickly becomes, more than anything, is a recommendation service. Whether that’s through people actually recommending places, or recommending them involuntarily by going there often. Which is why small businesses should do all they can to promote Foursquare. Whether it’s promotions, or just encouraging people to check in, the benefits from friends’ recommendations are straight-up tremendous
It could easily be just me, but I do not go to LinkedIn to get traditional news. In fact, that’s the last thing I would have ever associated with LinkedIn. That’s why I do not understand in the slightest why they would add so many link sharing features recently.
To get world news I usually turn to my favorite link aggregator: popurls.com. If I want to get the latest industry news, then I go to my Twitter account, where I’ve hand-picked developers and experts that I want to follow (with some friends thrown in there for good measure, of course!). If I want to get the latest news about what my friends, there’s clearly Facebook.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, is really about professional news in your network. If I want to keep in touch with a professional contact, or look up what someone is up to these days, that’s the first place I would go.
Just like you can’t out-Amazon Amazon or out-Walmart Walmart, you can’t out-Twitter Twitter. Facebook is having a similar problem, but at least they’re doing their own things as well.
LinkedIn should just realize who and what they are and what they are about and optimize everything they do around that. Who needs feature creep? No one.
Hey, maybe I’m just a supernerd, but I think everyone should have a blog. I guess that might be because I think everyone has something interesting to say. Sure, some people have more interesting things to say than other people, but that doesn’t mean not everyone has something interesting to bring to the table. That’s why I think that everyone should have a blog, or a website or something.
Maybe it’s just my profession as a web developer, but really, there are a lot of interesting things in this world. And a lot of interesting people. Facebook’s big thing is sharing, and I think that that is a great thing in this world.
We’re all so busy all the time, so a lot of the time, people just aren’t going to ask you things, whether it’s what you think or ideas you have or how you feel. Sure, it’s unfortunate, but true. There are too many distractions to ask everyone all those questions. That’s why it’s your responsibility to put yourself out there if you want to be heard. You can’t let it come to you.
Maybe no one will listen, but getting it out alone is a relieving experience for anyone.
