just set this up, giving it a try. can imagine value of this thing is totally network effect up to a limit.
yah except robbers already have other ways of doing this, and if people are so worried about it, they would probably be better off living in a place that’s harder to rob. imo, the benefits to this outweigh the basically non-existent risk. already seeing the benefits after using it for a few days.
coverage of places was already pretty good. most users seem to be westerners. anticipate users will start to increase a lot given iphone is now three carrier subsidized and ~1/24th of total subscribers on plans able to renew contracts monthly.
I don’t understand why you would want to let anyone and everyone know where you are.
I’m not paranoid, but then again, it’s no-one’s business what I’m up to and I’m not under any circumstances going to give away my location to a bunch of strangers.
I think the whole thing is quite scary and I’m sure you will once you get a bunch of cyber stalkers as well, it’s already happening in the US.
yes, you’re right on the privacy concerns. however, it’s not the entire world unless you decide to tweet it out. granted, this is pretty much what all users do anyway it seems.
this, gowalla and location in general is heavy rotation at sxsw right now, and obviously there are discussions going on re: privacy concerns, but it seems the potential benefits are out-voluming those.
imo, the benefits far outweigh any drawbacks, particularly for anyone who is trying to do any sort of inbound marketing… but maybe i just drank the koolaid with everybody else…
with iphone-like devices going to be pretty much the standard “phone” in as soon as five years, this is now going to become especially more important for local businesses, particularly in urban areas. just look at layars ar and how useful that is to an urban dweller (esp in taipei!) then image having a trail of check-ins from people you trust as vouches for locations nearby on top of that.
on the other end of things, obviously businesses/restaurants can inbound market with this if they knew i might like what they are hawking and counted on me checking-in and tweeting out to say get a promo coupon.
i didn’t get this at first either, but after using it for a weekend, it makes sense. i didn’t understand twitter at first either, but now i’ve seen how powerful the @ function is, it’s pretty obvious the value of it not just as a filtered news aggregator.
can’t wait to get back to bos or nyc where the bulk of my friends are using this and see the full social and community possibilities of this.
I still don’t get twitter. It seems like a bunch of people shouting.
Foursquare works remarquably well in Taipei (places like NCCU are almost fully Foursquar-ed), most of the users are indeed foreigners (and I know most of them in real…). There is mainly three uses in Foursquare :
- To brag about your current location (works well with friends still at work in Europe when you’ve already drunk half of the vodka sold at the Luxy)
- Ego trip with the Mayor system
- To discovers some places. Lately I was nearby 臺電大樓站 and wanted to eat something, I’ve checked my Foursquare application on my iPhone and I instantaneously received a pop-up saying that “Steve L. went to KGB Burger and say that "The best burgers in Taipei. Lots of vegetarian options too. Try the Radler drinks too!”, and it’s exactly what I did (you can, by this way, how social media can be important if it’s smartly used).
About privacy ? There is no privacy anymore on internet and honestly I don’t give a damn’ poo about that, I’m not sharing my credit card number but just that I’m eating a nice burger at KGB.
tortue, great assessment. i also agree w/ you re: privacy on internet. it’s pretty easy to back-out demographic info (at least to good statistical guess) from even private fb profiles these days. besides, my view is i’ve got nothing to hide, nor am i ashamed of anywhere i would go, so don’t care who knows where i am.
i don’t know that many ppl in taipei yet, but if it were back where i know more ppl (nyc, bos, dc, sfo, sjc) i would use this to filter the inbound local-search results using info from people whose opinion i care about… which btw, djlowballer to your question, is the most basic usage for twitter - filtering the bombardment of news to articles your network has vetted as worth reading.
the reason i actually decided that it was time to install this in tapei was this scenario:
- i was somewhere in da’an looking for a place to eat. i use layars augmented reality with full gps on because it helps me find places that are in alleys, basements, 4th floors, etc.
- i accidentally turned on the twitter user layer and while panning the phone looking for a good shabu shabu saw two 4sq check-in tweets, one from a person who had just checked into a place about 300m away to the northeast. if i had known that person in real life, i might have im’ed him/her to see if he/she wanted company.
- knowing that my friends use this to do mini-yelp-like scenarios with places to eat back in the states, i thought, well shit here we go, looks like people are indexing in tapei now, time to join in.
businesses will eventually figure out how much inbound-marketing this can bring. this is why foursquare has been able to go on the deal-making rampage it’s been on as of late. pretty straightforward “3-party free” business model.
foursquare will be announcing more and more real-life incentives fairly soon (eg: a free beer for becoming the mayor of a bar), but the badge system is still pretty fun also.
True and I’m ashamed to say that the mayorship system is terribly addictive as well, they day I got ousted from the Luxy Mayor position, I add some (nice and friendly :p) curses for the guy who did that! 
mabagal, what language are you speaking? I mean, it almost parses like English, but content-wise it’s some weird kind of Martian, I’m sure.
twitter invents its own self-sustaining reality, which is somehow not at all congruent to any reality not populated by people who like to tell other people where they are and what they’re doing, at every hour of the night and day, even if no-one else cares a rat’s arse. just a whole mess of electrons pointlessly whizzing around and discharging local accumulations of potential difference.
just saying.
Maybe you guys would like to check out TaiwanYo 台灣遊 (http://itunes.apple.com/tw/app/id345008600?mt=8).
It’s our iPhone app that has a little bit of Yelp to it, and a little bit of foursquare, but aimed at chinese language users in Taiwan (most of our data is in Chinese).
We’ve only been live for a few months, and are still trying out what works and what doesn’t. Our focus is to provide more fleshed out info so users can decide what place to go to. Clearly with the success of foursquare and gowalla, the social networking aspects are really important too, and we are working on cool stuff in that department 
[quote=“urodacus”]mabagal, what language are you speaking? I mean, it almost parses like English, but content-wise it’s some weird kind of Martian, I’m sure.
twitter invents its own self-sustaining reality, which is somehow not at all congruent to any reality not populated by people who like to tell other people where they are and what they’re doing, at every hour of the night and day, even if no-one else cares a rat’s arse. just a whole mess of electrons pointlessly whizzing around and discharging local accumulations of potential difference.
just saying.[/quote]
It’s definitely English, and furthermore very standard internet business vernacular.
Let me ask you: do you read your news off of the actual news sites? or sigh actual paper?
People who use Twitter for stuff like what you mention (eg: “LOL, I’m taking a dump.”) are doing it wrong.
People who use Foursquare, Gowalla simply to state their location are also doing it wrong.
The value of these things is in the thoughts and information your real-life friends and colleagues either generate or parse for you. I wouldn’t be their friend if I didn’t care about their thoughts and opinions, and vice-versa.
By the way, THE SINGLE FASTEST way right now to find out more about a current, right-now, event other than being there is simply to search Twitter. That last earthquake in TW? My friends back in the states found out on Twitter and called/IMed long before CNN decide to parse Twitter themselves to know to write about it.
Obviously, the tradeoff is that by using these free services, we generate value for that company, who is “collecting underpants” and has a plan for the ? part of “collect underpants, ?, profit”. Just like this very forum that you help admin. But we aren’t really doing it for free. The currency we are paid for doing this is just not (directly) monetary.
I get it: to operate in your universe, you actually need friends. or at least, people who have ‘friended’ you. Maybe that’s what I’m lacking. Friends who enhance their interactedness through the IM/twitterisation of social constructs and dynamic interpersonalness, thus leveraging their networking and peer-group specifically-acclaimed consumption to a level far beyond that achievable by the non-pantheon residents of yesteryear, those poor suckers who actually use paper for things other than wiping one’s butt.