Great post, Jeff.

I have been reluctant to use Foursquare for security purposes, although it seems like a lot of fun. Like all social media, I'm in the camp that you need to understand who your audience is and specifically - who has access to your feed/data.

When you wrote:
"When I first started experimenting with Foursquare a few months ago, I succumbed to the suggestion that it was going to be the next Twitter. However, recently I discovered that my phone number and email address is shared with all of my ‘friends.’ Knowing this, I now reserve my Foursquare friendships on a more selective basis along the lines of Facebook, as opposed to Twitter."

That was very helpful for me. This looks like something I'd like to dabble with now that I've been informed, but I agree I will need to be selective with my choice of friends if I wish to share this particular data.

It's a question of what type of data I would like to share with each social network that I join (and the subsequent friends).

You mentioned Facebook: I share more personal data there since I feel I can trust my vetted friends, and even then I can filter data shown to them based on their security groups. However, not everyone knows how to do this. I was talking to Chris Uschan and he said about a third of the people he knows fail to secure their photos because it's set to be viewable by people other than your friends by default!

In LinkedIn, I'm entirely professional and don't share very much information.

In Twitter, I only say what I would in a crowd (of millions).

In this social media channel of Foursquare, I could be giving out personal information as well as my location and habits. The emphasis on location is what worries me a little, although you could run into the same thing with other networks. See http://PleaseRobMe.com (although they've since taken down the functionality). However if you're filtering your Foursquare friends and also not posting to Twitter, I see this as less of a concern.

Jeff and others, what are your strategies for staying open and connected on social media platforms, while maintaining some modicum of privacy?

The thing about Foursquare is that it is a selective sharing. Your location is not wantonly shared with everyone. It actually requires you to check in before anyone knows where you're at. Additionally, pushing the information to Twitter or Facebook is optional and not something you have to do. As someone who has had a run-in with a mild cyber stalker, I will say it's no fun. But it wasn't enough to prevent me from using these tools...I just used my privacy settings wisely. Plus, who shares the really worrisome information like, "I'm walking into hotel room 256 all by myself"?

Along these lines, I do think the Blippy concept is interesting too, but definitely taking a wait-and-see approach with this one!

I believe Foursquare could really find its place at conventions and meetings if well-integrated with the online community platform.

As with any social network, you should always be selective about who you add to your network. It's never an effective or smart practice to simply add contacts willy-nilly :-) This is not only for safety and privacy issues, but business purposes as well.
Midori Connolly, Chief AVGirl
http://www.twitter.com/GreenA_V

I'm not too concerned about privacy. Each application has settings so you can limit who sees what if you wish. I know there are some who think that if you share on Foursquare that you're at the coffee shop, someone will see that and go rob your house. That view seems a bit too paranoid but I know many who think that. Of course, even without Foursquare someone can watch your comings and goings and do the same thing.

The walls between our personal and professional lives are definitely crumbling. Deciding whether to "friend" a member is a decision that many in the association world have to deal with at one time or another -- that's when I had to first figure out how I wanted to handle the personal vs professional issue. This "crumbling of walls" isn't as big a deal to those of us who have always worked in offices where we could be our whole selves and not have to worry about keeping our personal life private, but I know that's not the case for everyone. But you can Google anyone's name and often see both their personal and professional online footprint.

It's a fascinating topic!

Hey everyone - thank for the conversation.

It's interesting that we all apply different rules in to our contacts and friends on these networks. My Facebook rule, for example, is anyone who is a friend or a friend of a friend is fine with me. I make assumptions that with better connectivity they will all become friends.

On LinkedIn I'm a bit more selective, though, I know people who treat LinkedIn along a continuum that ranges from closed connections to letting in just about anyone. I think the key is how are you using the network. I'm doing a joint presentation at this summer's National Speakers Association convention where my co-presenter will explain how he uses LinkedIn as his social media hub and I'll compare to my hub, which is my blog. I guess the point is since LinkedIn is not my hub, I'm conservative with it - we use different rules for different purposes.

I like Midori's comment about willy nilly! That pretty much defines how most of us have used Twitter. It's interesting though that in the early days of Twitter I took the same approach but it felt intimate because there were just thousands - and not the millions that Sean referred to.

Anyway, I'm really seeing Foursquare as a nice middle ground - it's mobile, it's location based, it has selective privacy settings, and it's easy to use. To me those are all features that we need if we are going to engage the other 98.5% of the population who probably don't have a clue what we are talking about!

One of my follow up posts to this one on Foursquare did suggest the "crumbling of the walls" that Deirdre is referring to. I believe it is unavoidable. I believe the day will come when those walls will come down, when the exchange of information is so perfect, that we will have no choice but to be completely authentic. We'll know what our customers are thinking about our products and services automatically through RSS type feeds that bring that information to us.

We may as well start getting ready for it. Here is that post: http://bit.ly/aFNKGB

Jeff

Love the post. Got me thinking about how we can incorporate this into our booth at ASAE Annual!!! We're having a good time working on creating better, simpler online learning environments using tools like this. Great insight. Thanks.

Dave - Just check in with Foursquare every now and then (no pun intended - o.k., maybe a little!) - as I believe they are close to upgrading the capabilities to where you could use it to maximize your benefits at ASAE.

Jeff

Great conversation!

It also reminds me of the strategy of just "putting everything out there" as a means to control your identity. How could an identity thief steal and use my information when they are obviously not me? See my blog/twitter/foursquare, officer? I was nowhere near that bank on Tuesday!

Thanks to Midori and Deirdre and Jeff for drawing attention to the fact that I'm probably a little paranoid. That will teach me to actually try using the tool before I put any stock in what elements of the blogosphere are saying.

As Midori said, I also try to avoid the willy-nilly approach of adding contacts. TwitBlock has been helpful in that regard on Twitter when I may not have been as vigilant as I could be.

And Deirdre, you made a great point about the crumbing of walls. I'm very excited to see how the online community grows in the future and the new ways that we can build relationships.

http://twitter.com/SeanMLawler

I am a public person online but a private person offline--e.g. if I was at a restaurant with my husband or a friend, I wouldn't love it if a stranger just walked up and started talking to me because he'd seen me check in on Foursquare--that's the main privacy thing I think about when I use Foursquare. I do use it and think there's a lot of potential for businesses and restaurants to use it to attract and retain customers, but there are definitely some things I'm not so sure about with it. For instance, like Jeff said, I don't like that when the last update of the iPhone app came out it just automatically made your phone number visible. I HATE talking on the phone and the idea of just anyone being able to call me freaks me out!

That said, otherwise I like it and admit that I am hooked on it enough to make choices like what movie theater to go to based on wanting to oust the mayor of a specific theater!

Maybe a happy medium may be geolocation/scavenger hunt mobile apps for conventions? We're going to be looking at some and at my first quick glance some look pretty fun. I think one thing to remember with Foursquare is that, outside of big cities, it's still pretty low on the adoption curve-I'm pretty much the only one who even uses it where I live (which is why I'm the mayor of 11 places!). I think it's one thing to watch attendees at SXSW go crazy checking in on Foursquare, but another when you think of your own organizations members. Chances are if the field they're in isn't tech-y or marketing-y, many/most members may never have even heard of Foursquare yet.

F/Y/I

Microsoft’s Bing is adding Foursquare To Maps. Users of Bing Maps will now be able to see foursquare check-ins, badges, and mayorships in Bing Maps and see tips from any foursquare customer and zoom to the location for visualization.

Maggie - 11 Mayor badges? It may be time to run for Governor!

I have had a number of conversations about the adoption rate. That is something we will definitely cover on the April 7th webinar. Some have informed me on Twitter that it is a location thing, and I know from my own experience that it can be a market issue as well.

As Dave points out, Bing indeed is adding Foursquare to Maps - things of this nature will definitely bring this forward. I don't think this is quite ready for prime time, but for that matter, neither is Twitter in many circles.

Nevertheless, I foresee the capabilities of Apps like this as being more intuitive for a wider audience. I also suspect that the more the techies learn how to work the API's on these platforms to make it easier for us - such as with voice recognition software, the more easily we'll be able to use them to accomplish our objectives.

Jeff

I asked an acquaintence who attended SXSW if he had used Foursquare while he was there. Since he was in a booth most of the time he said they were focusing more on the QR codes. I think it definitely can have a place in restaurant and nite spot marketing campaigns but the convention audience should really fit the app. I see a real security concern with all of this tracking. It seems to fit a profile for those invincible thinking generation Ys.

Last summer while my 20 something daughter was on vacation my husband proved the point by calling up her cellphone through her Loopt account. Not only was he tracking her along the Jersey coastline, when she finally parked, he hooked into the Boardwalk computer security and watched her walking hand in hand with her boyfriend. At that point I told him he had passed the creepy father point and shut down his computer link.

Add this virtual invasion of privacy to the real world lack of privacy and there is a recipe for way too much access.

Brenda

Has anyone explored whether Foursquare can be used to check in at the booth level of an event? My understanding is that, like other GPS-based location based services (LBS), Foursquare can't work with that precision (say +/- 3 feet) and wouldn't work reliably inside a crowded conference facility due to signal issues anyway. 

It seems like what's needed for conferences is a robust LBS indoor solution that uses WiFi for location like the technology from Ubisense, coupled with a robust, fixed, known conference-hall-optimized WiFi infrastructure like that from Xirrus. This would allow Foursquare to do check-ins at exhibitor booths (unlocking tons of social engagement options) and also enable cool location based wayfinding features that work indoors in busy conference facilities. 

Thoughts?

This doesn't answer John's question, but we were part of the Association Toolbox webinar series put on by Peach New Media and they had a foursquare location for that - despite it being a 100% virtual event.  I thought that was pretty interesting!

We recently did some social media work for the 2010 NAB Show, and there were definitely people checking in to individual booths at the show. It's just a matter of creating a venue page for the booth using the address of the convention center or event location. We created a Foursquare page for an individual session with Stan Lee and modded by Chris Hardwick.

Kari - So what I am hearing is that this is not that difficult to do.  Can you share a few tips on how to accomplish this?  :)

Jeff

Hi Jeff - it was pretty easy to do. We even set up a Foursquare venue page for the entire show so people could check in, and as it turns out, a lot of attendees were doing the same thing themselves (since Foursquare allows anyone to create a new venue). So, there were many incarnations of the NAB Show page on Foursquare.

Here are the steps to create a new venue:

1) Log in to Foursquare

2) Set your location to the city where the event is taking place

3) Click on Add Things at the top of the page

4) Click on Add a New Venue

When we created the Stan Lee session page on Foursquare, we just made sure to include all the pertinent details for the session (session name, event name, room number) in the Name field. We then set the location to the address of the convention center. This was created for an on-site contest, so we promoted the page and contest via the show's social media outposts (Twitter, Facebook, blog post on the show blog). We chose a winner at random from people who checked in to the session.

Intel did a promotion using Foursquare to drive people to their booth at CES; however, they actually did a special deal of some sort with Foursquare in order to create custom badges and a custom venue page.

Hey Kari,

Creating your own session page on Foursquare was a pretty creative kludge, I have to admit! Clever. However I notice on the page you shared in your comment above that it appears only 7 people checked in there. Please correct me if I'm reading it wrong. If it's right, then that's pretty negligible penetration/engagement given that NAB is an 80,000-person tech-savvy mega-event, the session was with a legend like Stan Lee, and there was a super-cool Stan-Lee-autographed Spiderman comic book being raffled off in the Foursquare contest.

What happened? 

Let's dig into it. Do you attribute the low Foursquare check-ins to: (i.) Low-adoption of Foursquare among NAB attendees overall? (ii.) Insufficient marketing of Foursquare by the event to attendees (this sounds like an experimental and perhaps last-minute guerilla campaign, which is cool). (iii.) Poor or nonexistent mobile device signal in the building? Or (iv.) the fact that without +/- 3 feet indoor LBS accuracy, Foursquare couldn't give precise enough geo-located places within the venue to let attendees find the Stan Less session "place" you created?

Maybe a little of all, but I'd like to pick on reason (iv.). The technical shortcoming of your kludge is that the more event Foursquare pages that are added by your method, the longer becomes the flat list of places that all come up at the venue's main geo-location. If I understand this approach right, this would create a huge unsorted list of "pseudo-places" that would be unorganized and bewildering to users. Precise indoor +/- 3 feet geo-location would solve this, by breaking a long one-level-deep "flat" list of unsorted "pseudo places" into a geo-sorted two-level-deep hierarchy of hundreds of short but highly location-relevant geo-targeted lists that are within a few feet of you. The short list would recalibrate and change with your movements around the facility. Therefore, you'd get a very easy user experience for indoor Foursquare check-ins. 

Mean this as a constructive analysis. Really like the creativity of your kludge. You think like an inventor/engineer/creative problem solver. 

--John

Hi John - it was indeed # ii, because it was a last minute and experimental campaign. We literally thought of and implemented it the day before and morning of the session. However, you may very well be correct with your # iv reasoning. I'm definitely not saying that my method described above is foolproof, but I think that Foursquare is not quite adaptable for conference use yet - although I hope they will be and upgrade their functionality to work much like you describe. We basically took the tools we had available and used them as creatively as possible to put together an 11th-hour on-site promo (with literally a morning's worth of marketing to back it). The feedback we received was good, and considering all that, I think it worked pretty well! :-)

I'd like to offer up a different way to use Foursquare at events that helps capitalize and integrate with the other channels you may already be using...

As an avid Foursquare user, I get a little miffed when I hear about people adding booth locations while at conferences, etc. They are not a stationary location (in the long run) and don't last long enough to really justify their use. Also, I feel like it clogs up the database, 1. Making it hard to find the exact location (like what John said above) and 2. Really isn't in the true spirit of Foursquare (but that's me being a Foursquare snob, sorry).

However, there is another way to use Foursquare and integrate it with what you are probably already doing. (Also, don't forget that there are tools like Loopt, Gowalla & MyTown, which means Foursquare isn't the only game in town)

More than likely, most people in this community are using Twitter for their events, and if so, you've probably established a hashtag. 

Of the three geo-location applications I've used (Foursquare, Gowalla & Loopt), they all have an option of pushing to Twitter & Facebook as well as allowing users to enter extra text (on Foursquare it's called a shout). And more than likely if the person is adopting Foursquare they are probably already on Twitter and/or Facebook.

What we are doing this year is to encourage attendees to check-in and include the #aapa10 hashtag in their "shouts" or updates. If they push these to Twitter and/or Facebook, it will allow us to track how many people are actually using the tool in relation to the conference, whether or not they are checking in at the venue. 

We've explained it on our conference blog (http://www.aapa.org/upcoming-events/annual-conference/the-panel/1722-foursquare-everywhere) and have noticed that many more PAs on Facebook & Twitter are using Foursquare in their daily lives. Which means it's looking good for conference and we're building our base appropriately.

To encourage attendees to use these tools, we're also having social media oriented ribbons (totally ripped that one from ASAE, HT), and including a "Find me on Foursquare" one that attendees can wear. 

Now I really wish Foursquare would add an "event addendum" to their tool, but until we do that, we'll be sticking with the integration option.

We are looking at DoubleDutch for our annual convention in November. I like it because it's private--only attendees use it, you can create custom badges and it provides sponsorship opportunities for exhibitors. That said, right now it's only for iPhone--will supposedly be available for other phones by fall. I'm not sure how much our members will be into it, but I suspect that there's a way better chance of them using something private and event-specific like this rather than Foursquare. I did an informal poll on Facebook about Foursquare and the responses were overwhelmingly negative.

Lynn - that's a really creative solution to the inherent problem with Foursquare as it's used for events, which you describe. Since you also mentioned other geo-location tools (Gowalla, Loopt), how did you decide to use Foursquare for your conference? Or are you encouraging attendees to use the other tools in a similar fashion as well?

Maggie - I've seen DoubleDutch, and it definitely looks intriguing. Glad to see you're using it for your convention. From your description, it seems like a pretty ideal tool for events. Let us know how well it works for you!

Kari - We're encouraging attendees to use the tool that works for them. Both Loopt & Gowalla also push to Twitter (and pretty sure FB), so really they can use any of the tools that they are most comfortable with. Foursquare just happens to have the bigger name and is what most people are using. A few PAs that were using Loopt have even stepped over to Foursquare now that they've seen other PAs using it as well.

We're doing the "Find me on Foursquare" ribbon because that is what I see the most of in my group of PAs on Twitter. Next year we'll add others if we need to, just right now foursquare is the one in my face.

Maggie - That's when it really comes down to knowing your audience. You know this as well as I do, every tool is not going to work the same for every group. You have to figure out the best solution for you.

I like the idea of DoubleDutch - but one challenge that always arises with white label social networks/platforms is the struggle to keep up with multiple platforms...does anyone else experience this or hear this complaint? I get it frequently.

And it's great that DoubleDutch is integrated with other platforms...but then doesn't that kind of eliminate the privacy of the network?

Hmmmm :-)

I am intrigued by the security discussion. Certainly we take care as many have suggested to whom we follow/friend/tap on the shoulder in social circles. Given that, I'd argue that we're merely announcing to those people where we are and (maybe) what we're doing. Do I feed every check-in to Twitter...no way. What I am doing is always thinking about what would be relevant to my target audience on each social network and then, post info accordingly.

There is huge potential to vulcan mindmeld location based technology with conferences. Think sending attendees on quests/missions that involve education sessions, exhibitors, other attendees and (dare I say) the local establishments.

Send me to your booth to check-in...make me the mayor...it's fun. Take it several steps further and use the technology to create collaborative experiences. That's where the upside is.

Kevin - Your thoughts on using Foursquare to encourage specific behaviors is exactly what I was thinking when I wrote that article.  I'm not sure that is as easily accomplished with something like Twitter.

It just so happens that DoubleDutch read my article and wanted to chat about why they are a better choice for conventions than Foursquare.  So I will circle back and share what I learn with everyone. :)

Jeff

Kevin and all - While a great solution to check in into places like restaurants, I believe Foursquare was not created with the idea to be used in conferences and tradeshows. It lacks for instance the critical component of networking, which is pretty important for attendees.

When we started http://wellknown.as we thought what this space does need is a mobile platform, which is free for any event and attendee to use. We believe events should NOT be required to pay to use a mobile solution at any event. And the platform must offer truly value both to attendees and organizers (e.g. must offer attendees tools to meet other peers). We also believe that people want one solution, one application in their smartphones, which they can use at any event and not a bunch of different apps with limited duration.

We would love to hear your feedback and opinion on what we are building! The solution is already available for the iPhone and web and anyone can try it out!

You can reach me here also if you have questions!

Rod

@Rodrigo - Wellknown.as looks interesting. I've signed up on your website and I'm trying it out. Any chance for a Droid app soon?

Some constructive feedback, since you asked:

I did notice that the Upcoming Events (http://wellknown.as/events/upcoming) lists events that are in the past. Also, I don't see a way to look for other people and connect with them - am I missing something? I tried to use the search box at the top, and it doesn't seem to work. I'm also asked to input tags for my profile, but I can't click on them in my profile to find similarly-tagged people. Would also be nice, when creating events, to be able to tag them so you can look for events based on those.

Since you mention that networking is critical for this sort of app, can you tell me how Wellknown.as is filling this gap where Foursquare is not? What kind of networking can you do on this app that you can't on Foursquare (or even Gowalla)?

Not trying to be overly-critical - just trying to get a better idea of how Wellknown.as is differentiating itself from other geo-location apps, specifically for events and conferences. Thanks for letting us know about it!

@Kari: Thanks for your reply! Yes, soon we will be able to offer a solution to other smartphones. We are in beta stage, so you may see sometimes hiccups, which we apologize in advance.

Attendees who set their RSVP are visible in the people attending section, so you can search and select participants to meet and/or send other participants messages and eventually connect in a permanent way.

I would say that Foursquare and Gowalla are great location-aware solutions but they focus are neither on the event industry nor they help individuals and brands to discover new potential business partners and services.

What do you see as a fundamental need in mobile solutions for the event industry? Thanks!

This (FourSquare) being such a popular thread I thought I'd share a link to the MPI Blog Engage (a very good Blog by the way) that discusses Foursqure and it's use at the #WEC10 conference coming up this month (July).

http://www.mpiweb.org/Community/Blogs/Engage.aspx

MPI WEC also has an active community for attendeeds -  http://wec-2010.pathable.com/

Search Engines Eye Foursquare’s Data

 

Copyright ContentNext Media Inc. 2002—2010

 

Are the major search engines about to give their badge of approval to Foursquare? CEO Dennis Crowley tells The Telegraph that his company is talking to Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) about some sort of data sharing deal. All three major search engines reached deals last fall to include updates from Twitter in their results—and these talks seem to suggest that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft think Foursquare is growing fast enough that its data already has—or will soon have—value for a broad audience too.

More...

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-search-engines-eye-foursquares-data/

This is going to get a whole lot more interesting with the soon to be launched Facebook Places - their geo-location service that will also partner with Foursquare and others.  Here's a post I wrote this evening that gives you an overview of how it works and what it means for businesses and events: http://bit.ly/bHelJB

Jeff

@jeff thanks much for facilitating this topic. Geo-location is certainly now (thanks Facebook) a huge growth area for mobile computing and social networking. Checking into places (be it restaurants, hotels, offices or booth areas on a show floor) is the first step into a larger world, that being turning the fact that we (and our friends) are in the same or spatially close locations into something meaningful. To solve a shared (common) problem. I think the real win for conferences and businesses alike is when geo-location meets social gaming. If you haven't yet, check out Jane McGonigal's work in gaming. At the very least, watch her TED talk.

Kevin - Thanks for the links.   I am not familiar with Jane's work and will check it out.  

I have been fascinated by the whole concept of 'time and place' since my studies of Quantum Mechanics in college chemistry and physics.  Who would have thought there would be practical, real-life applications!

I'll admit to being a little out of touch with social gaming, but as I learn more, I am beginning to understand that it creates a great deal of learning that we can apply to our work with conferences and businesses ... as is the microcosm so is the macrocosm. :)

Jeff