Conclusion of the Four Square Experiment

Posted on | March 7, 2010 | No Comments

Can I trade badges for girl scout cookies?

So after just over a month of checking in, adding tips, and completing to do’s on Four Square, I’m not sure if I have a definitive answer whether its a valuable social network for me. Four Square definitely comes off more as a game then a social network. The competition of declaring mayorships and collecting badges are enticing enough to strike that competitive streak in everyone. During the course of the month I was dismayed when I lost a mayorship, and found myself visiting that location more frequently, just to get it back.

During the course of the month, my Four Square profile has seen four new badges. The Super User badge, for 30 check ins in a month, the Local Badge for checking in to Online Guru 3x in the week, the Bender Badge for checking in 4+ Nights in a row, and the Explorer Badge for checking into 25 Venues.

I also established a few new majorships, which I guess shows my dedication to these businesses or perhaps how routine my life may be. So not a big surprise I’m the major of Oggi’s Pizza, Pure Salon & Spa, Chipotle, Taco Bell, and Luna Grill all withing 5-10 minutes from home, and several right across the street.

A buddy of mine also pointed out the dangers for location based social networking. Spreading your Four Square updates through Twitter can give any potential robber the knowledge that your not home. Please Rob Me takes results from the Twitter feed looking for Four Square’s tags. The website was designed to enlighten Four Square users to what they are sending out on the web. Over the course of a minute over 100 Four Square updates were sent out.

I guess the next valuable question is, where is the value in all of this Four Square madness. For me, there wasn’t much except for the tips I found based on your location. In-N-Out and Chipotle list secret menu items, while others offer parking advice. Once again, perhaps if more friends were on Four Square I might opt to use it more frequently.

That being said I’m going to pick Four Square as the current front runner for location based social networking. They are doing a better job then BrightKite, Loopt, Yelp, or Gowalla. With the rumor Facebook is going to join the club, this might be the catalyst that gets local social networking to the masses.