I think there's a serious bifurcation between "tech-savvy, smartphone-using, social (and generally single) twenty- and thirty-somethings with disposable income and time, living in urban centers" and ... everyone else. If you aren't in that first group (I'm not), location-aware apps and social services aren't going to have a lot of utility. But if you live in Brooklyn, work in Manhattan, go out to bars or restaurants with friends two or three times per week, a service like Foursquare could be really useful: "I'm heading to the subway station ... which stop has a higher concentration of my friends at bars? Do I get off in the Village or Chelsea? Oh? Everyone's at Shake Shack? Off I go!" (and so on)
I'm in that group, and I don't find these services particularly compelling either. Maybe you need to add "extroverted" to your list; I'm not sure. I tend to have a smallish number of people I'm really interested in hanging out with, and we just coordinate directly.
I did spend some time using an earlier location-based social network and the problem it had was this: you don't know what check-ins are general invitations to come and join them, and which are purely habit (or in the case of 4sq, competitive). I, personally, was never confident of the etiquette, so generally avoided just dropping in at places where someone checked in.
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I think there's a serious bifurcation between "tech-savvy, smartphone-using, social (and generally single) twenty- and thirty-somethings with disposable income and time, living in urban centers" and ... everyone else. If you aren't in that first group (I'm not), location-aware apps and social services aren't going to have a lot of utility. But if you live in Brooklyn, work in Manhattan, go out to bars or restaurants with friends two or three times per week, a service like Foursquare could be really useful: "I'm heading to the subway station ... which stop has a higher concentration of my friends at bars? Do I get off in the Village or Chelsea? Oh? Everyone's at Shake Shack? Off I go!" (and so on)
I'm in that group, and I don't find these services particularly compelling either. Maybe you need to add "extroverted" to your list; I'm not sure. I tend to have a smallish number of people I'm really interested in hanging out with, and we just coordinate directly.
I did spend some time using an earlier location-based social network and the problem it had was this: you don't know what check-ins are general invitations to come and join them, and which are purely habit (or in the case of 4sq, competitive). I, personally, was never confident of the etiquette, so generally avoided just dropping in at places where someone checked in.
does anyone want to go to shake shack right now? I do.
Upvoted because (a) I always want to go to Shake Shack and (b) why would anyone downvote this harmless comment?