Depends what side of the square you’re on. Did you add a single new restaurant in a month of using Foursquare? If you did they they win. The ‘game’ in itself is absolutely useless, but it turns out that competition amongst people for arbitrary objects (badges) is a great way to get people to do a ton of work for you – namely, building the worlds largest dataset of restaurants and points of interest. That’s incredibly valuable. While as a user Foursquare is pretty useless, there’s a lot of potential for it to turn into something handy, aka – give me a coupon for being the mayor, or let me know about deals in the area, etc.

I get the value of building datasets … but how much information is too much? The dataset is already being put to use at http://pleaserobme.com. Granted, their approach is overtly alarmist but it raises a reasonable question about the apparent need to tell everyone, everything. Geo-location apps may be here to stay but they seem a bit “wild West” at this point with all the focus on the data and very little focus on the privacy or at least very clearly educating users about the potential privacy pitfalls of using the tools.

Useless, eh?

Competition is an inherent part of human nature; it’s simply what we do, and you can see it in all aspects of our society. Likewise, the accumulation of tokens of percieved value, from Olympic pins to techno gadgets, stamps, or little red, green, blue, and purple pieces of paper with old men on them.

So do Foursquare and Gowalla have any value?are they useful? The easy answer here is that cvalue and use are relative. A socket wrench is of no use to me in my life. A glass of water in the desert has a significant value. It’s all relative, but that’s too easy.

So foursquare and gowalla specifically have some use and value to some people. If you don’t have a data plan though, a lot of apps are useless to you. Don’t blame the apps; the assumption for iPhone users is that you will have a data plan, and it’s a sensible assumption.

Foursquare awards badges and points. Badges as achivements, and points for the leaderboard. Accumulation of these may not be important to all users, but for most I believe that’s true.

So what use is it? Well, there are a few. You get a bonus for checking in o a new place. This encourages people to get out of their ruts. You get point for adding a venue, which encourages people to did new places other people haven’t found yet.

Further, it’s a boon for restaurants. Especially if you tweet your checkins (which gets annoying fast), you’re giving the restaurants free advertising. You tell people that you’re there, a tacit approval unless otherwise stated. You give the name and address of the place, so others can find it. You also encourage your friends who are nearby to come and say hello.

There is also the question of mayorship. Visit a place more than anyone else, and you’re the mayor. If I visit ten times, and you visit eleven, I’m more likely to go a block out of my way for a coffee or doughnut to get my crown back, which benefits businesses as well.

And businesses are getting in on it as well. Free refills for the mayor! Check in and get a free side of fries! It provides a way for them to identify and reward high-value customers, and build repeat business with a minimal budget, and minimal budgets are a huge marketing limitation for the mom-and-pop shops that give a city it’s character.

Foursquare creates a game out of visiting new places, seeing new sights, repeat patronage, customer incentives and promotions, and hanging out with friends. it’s possible that none of those are useful to you, but I enjoy them quite a bit.

“everybody and their mother has said that geo-location services are here to stay”?

You have to stop listening to what marketer douchebags tell you. Tip: if they say “social media” often, they’re probably already mind-dead.

I agree though. I tried to like them but my interest has waned.

I think location based apps are going to be here for quite some time and both Foursquare and Gowalla are in their infancy. Rudimentary game play with very little reward for the players. Collecting badges and mayorships will wear thin quickly. I for one was bored with both apps within 1 week of trying them. Hell I was number one on the leader board the week it launched so it’s not like I did not give the tires a good’ol kick.

The power of these apps has not even come close to be unleashed and I think they are mostly in the data gathering phase of their lifecycle. But soon the checkin army is going to want much bigger rewards for their efforts and I believe those are in the pipeline. The two apps have been signing deals left, right and centre with companies that are willing to reward “players” with substantial rewards for their loyalty.

Apps like Foursquare in the end will become marketing vehicles for brands like newspapers and tv have been in the past. The content, aka gameplay will need to keep up and engage in order to make them a long lasting affair. The games will need to become much better with better payoffs.

Will the masses join in or will it just be the early adopters is the real question. At the moment it is 80% plus geeks an early adopters. If critical mass is not achieved the brands will abandon the platforms as well.

So, I’ll expand on my tweet-replies.

1) I’ve found Foursquare (in particular) to be really useful when travelling. When in San Diego, I used it extensively by browsing nearby tips. This led to my discovery of some really great places I’d otherwise never have known of, that weren’t in schmaps or guidebooks or anything. Plus – suggestions on what food on the menu is good, etc. So it was really helpful.

2)My take on Foursquare is that it’s a share&share-alike app. The checkin/checkout part is whatever, but leaving tips for others is really helpful. As a local, leave tips about the place you checked in at – this helps others who are less familiar with the venue. When traveling, use the tips to help you find new places you’d otherwise miss.

Finally, I have, since using foursquare on 2 occasions ended up meeting up with people in a bar we were both already in, but didn’t know the other was until we checked in. And then our party got bigger and more fun, so, yay!

Finally, as a recovering boy scout & a nerd, I really do want to collect all my foursquare badges, as useless as they might be

With Translink & the New York Times now experimenting with the 4square platform, I think we’re in a critical time where these will either work wonderfully (for instance: links to NYTimes reviews of venues = awesome), or it’ll fail and it will be abandoned (to echo @jpiddy above).

I agree with JP here. Dodgeball was way too early, and Foursquare/Gowalla are still very much the infancy of this kind of location based app. People are going to become more and more comfortable sharing their location, mainly because there will be real incentives to opening theirs up — and that probably won’t just be discounts and freebies. Only part of the population is that interested in deals and discounts. I think you need actual value — what are the things around you that you can’t find on Twitter or Google now? That’s what my new startup’s working on.

Appreciate you stoking a fire here Raul!

Thank you for writing about this as I’ve been wondering the same myself. I tried Foursquare, to test and see if there was a business application for it.

I suppose I’ve found some use for it. I am out and about a lot with my business, and I visit many places that my clientele will likely visit. I created a company account and check in to all these places. I figure it can’t hurt if people see that my company is the Mayor of somewhere that they like, or that it’s checked in somewhere that they are or are close to. It just gets the name out more, and hopefully reinforces that my brand matches their lifestyle.

This was the plan, but I find myself using it less and less.

Pretty small scale branding/marketing as I don’t think tons of people use 4Square, but it only takes seconds so why not?

i foursquared for 2 weeks or so, then travelled overseas. i stopped when i couldnt even get any points for being far from home, plus one of the cities i was in, didnt even exist on foursquare! (Manila) its a major city!

All i wanted was some sort of travel bonus, but i get to my final destination, and it says i am now Ryan of Australia. (which i am not, im from Canada).

this was a BIG drawback in my book and I havent used it since returning to vancouver

I think that location services are not useful enough in and of themselves to be built as standalone platforms. They are much better as complimetary features of existings products such as facebook or twitter