Zhephree

Came across this article today: http://www.connectioneconomy.com/2010/08/09/as-google-wave-dies-heres-what-foursquare-does-not-understand-about-social-media/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+WhatIcAtTomorrowToday+(%3Fic+%40TomorrowToday.biz)

I don’t totally agree.

• They have failed completely to discuss and engage with users on the issue of security. I personally don’t have a problem checking in and letting my friends know where I am, but many people do fear the openness of letting others know their physical movements. Foursquare needs to actively engage in debate and social values shaping conversations.
   Check in off the grid if you don’t want people to see. Only your friends can see your check-ins. Don’t push check-ins to twitter and Facebook if you don’t want others to see. If you want to push to Facebook, set your default publishing settings to “friends only” and set your Twitter tweets to “protected”. Only friends can see.
• Their iPhone app provides no information from Foursquare. On a few occasions, Foursquare has shut down in order to do upgrades. But all that happens on their App and website is that nothing works. No messages, no interactions, no connection…
  This may be the case, but the webOS app gives pop-up errors on every internet connection attempt.
• When you move from one city to another, you start all over again. It treats each city entirely independently. For what reason? 
  This hasn’t been true for a long time. Since the launch of “foursquare everywhere”  you have one set of badges. There aren’t Newbie badges in every city anymore. This whole argument is invalid. You can see your mayorships from around the world too.
• It provides no connections with my friends. Why is there no “friends nearby” feature? And why are there no features to challenge friends, connect with friends, chat to friends? This surely is the key to social media success: that you create connections between people, and enable them to connect with each other. Foursquare doesn’t do this.
  There’s a friends map in webOS and iPhone. That lets you see nearby friends quite easily.  Connect and chat are done through other means. This is why foursquare is for friends in real life, not just internet friends. Foursquare exposes your cell phone number to your friends, and from their profile you can initiate a text or phone call. Why build a chat layer into a service when you already have a phone?
• It does not provide “near things”. The only “near here” type functions are paid for adverts called “specials nearby”. But what about “places your friends frequent” or “places your friends have written tips about” or “most visited place near here”?
  Nearby places. Nearby friends. Nearby tips. Also, Specials are NOT paid for. They’re free. Anyone with a business can set one up. 
• It doesn’t do competition well. I have an ongoing battle with “Kay A.” for the mayorship of Raynes Park train station. But, there is very little way for me to interact with Kay. More importantly, neither of us know where we are in the competition stakes. The system doesn’t let me know how many check ins I need in order to become mayor, or how close other people are behind me in the race. Each venue needs a “leader board” type function to raise the stakes of competition. Otherwise, it loses its lustre very quickly.
  Link your account though twitter. Or, I’d argue, why communicate at all? The fun is the silent competition. By allowing communication, you open the door to harassment. Also, it doesn’t tell you how many checkins you need to become mayor for a reason: it curbs cheating. Go to whenwillibecomemayor.com if you’re that curious.
• What’s the point? Badges are too hard to earn. I can leave tips at venues, but there is no incentive to do so. Companies are given no incentive to interact with regular attenders. And so on… Incentives are required
  Fun, entertainment? Why play a video game? You don’t get anything but meaningless achievements or trophies. It’s just fun! Also, the incentive to leave tips is to encourage others to leave good tips, thus making both yours and their experience better. I think a businesses reason to interact is more sales, more money, and more people being in their store or restaurant. If people are fighting for a mayorship or a special badge, they’ll frequent a place.
• Finally, providing feedback to the system (especially, for example, indicating duplicate venues) is a really long and complicated procedure (and is not a feature of the iPhone app – why not?). This functionality also needs to be delegated down to “editors” in local areas (think of how Wikipedia manages content).
  Not long and  difficult. IN every app and on the website, you have at most two clicks or taps to mark a venue as closed, wrong address, mislocated, or a duplicate. And, there are three levels of Super Users and only a certain number per city that go through these flaggings and fixes the venues. So, everything he’s asking for already exists.

Not bashing the article (well, maybe I am) but maybe do some google or twitter searches before writing an article? Or visit support.foursquare.com first?