blogher10

More and more people these days have cell phones with a GPS feature and a data plan and location based social networking uses those features to allow you to indicate to your friends where you currently are. The idea behind location based social networking is that your current location is your status update. Rather than telling people where you are, you can show them on a map.

I’m using Foursquare to experiment with location based social networking. I picked it over a handful of other options because it seemed like the most popular network and some places I frequent like Starbucks and Chili’s have discounts and freebies for Foursquare users.

I’ve been using Foursquare for about two and a half months now. It took me a long time to finally join because I was concerned about the privacy and security issues of broadcasting my current location to the whole world. But the fact is you’re not broadcasting it to the whole world.

The Foursquare iPhone app allows you to select various levels of location sharing each time you check in:

• You can choose to check in “off the grid” which means you can see the action in your own history and stats but no one else can see it.
• You can share with just your Foursquare friends. I’m currently keeping this list pretty much restricted to people I know in real life who I trust to know my current location at any time.
• You can send your check in to Facebook. My Facebook profile is also limited to only people I know in real life but I don’t want to flood them with check ins at the grocery store so I rarely use this option but I did use it on my recent trip to New York when visiting interesting landmarks.
• You can send your check in to Twitter. This is the most public of the options if your Twitter profile is publicly visible. I very rarely use this option, but I did use it a lot when I was at #BlogHer10 along with a lot of my Twitter friends.

What I love about Foursquare is the history and statistics. I’m obsessed with personal data collection and love to be able to see the record of my life in numbers.

This is a screen shot of my history page while I was at #BlogHer10. Thursday involved a lot of off site private events at various locations: the Kodak event at Caroline’s, Social Luxe at Arena, and Martha Stewart’s event at her New York office and then I came back to the hotel for one of the conference parties. Friday and Saturday I spent my time in the hotel attending the conference, Friday I wound down the evening chatting with friends in the hotel lobby bar and Saturday started with an early off site breakfast. (Sometimes I forget to check in at places while I’m there which is why Thursday shows me checking in at Martha Stewart and the Hilton at the same time but as far as the privacy and security concerns go that might actually work in my favor.)

This is a screen shot of my statistics for the past month. Again I just love to quantify my life in numbers. Since I was on vacation in New York City for the first time ever, I probably checked in at a lot more places and a lot more new places than normal. As you can see, the graph points towards the end of this 30 day segment are much higher than at the beginning when I was just hanging out around home.

Have you tried a location based social network? What do you like or dislike about it?

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