One way is by having a lot of friends on the application. Friendships on foursquare are mutual (as in, you don't "follow" someone who isn't "following" you, like is the case on Twitter). This can open up some opportunities to you. If your friend is the mayor of a particular venue, you get extra points on your check in (I will explain that later). Also, I am personally impressed by people who have a lot of friends because I, myself, only have about ten. And foursquare is not used as widely as, say, Facebook or Twitter, so the likelihood that your friend has a foursquare account is lesser.Another status symbol of sorts is to be at the top of your friends' leaderboard. The leaderboard is composed of all of your friends (and your friends only). You get points for checking in at every location. For instance, you get one point for checking in somewhere you have been before, two points if the mayor is there when you check in, three points if you are the mayor, if you have checked in at the same venue three or more days in one week, or if it is a venue you have never been to before. The points are calculated on a rolling seven-day expiration, down to the minutes. That means, if I checked in and got five points exactly one week ago, I will have five fewer points one at the same time this week. Being number one on your friends' leaderboard does not really mean anything, it is just a pat-on-the-back worthy experience.
Mayorships are also impressive feats within the foursquare community. Holding the title of mayor shows that a user has checked in at a single venue more days in the past sixty days than anyone else. Some places have incentives for visiting and becoming the mayor. The Co-op, for instance, rewards a $50 gift card to the mayor on the 28th of every month. The only thing the mayor has to remember is to visit the Co-op on the 28th to show proof of the fact, which will pop up upon checking in. At those places that do not have mayoral perks, it is another pat-on-the-back experience.
Why is competition such a driving force in our society? Especially the kind with no driving force or end in sight? It is merely competition for the sake of competition. Has anyone encountered this kind of competition on their sites? What implications does this have about our society?
I have a friend whose Foursquare posts show up on her Twitter feed, and every couple of weeks it announces that she is the mayor of Carmel Elementary (I think it must change frequently). So I have this mental picture of all these parents at the school parking lot, obsessively checking in.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's so interesting how the place where you check-in plays a factor in whether someone will check-in at all. A friend was telling me how her roommate (who is always looking for attention) checked-in at the ER. Who at the ER has time to check-in on f^2?? This bring up the idea that perhaps where you check-in can be used a technique to get what we want, such as attention in my friend's roommate's case.
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