Foursquare's a maybe

I joined Foursquare around a year ago, and we were friends for a while, fell out and have recently kissed and made up. I have a long-standing bet with a friend who's social media manager for a national brand about Foursquare and how it is in Britain. He was not a fan from the start and said it would never take-off. Contrarian that I am, I thought it would be a slow-burner, but would take-off. A year on, I fear I backed the wrong horse.

I have used it for the last month, and while I don't share my check-ins on Twitter, have enjoyed the quasi-competitive nature of it. I am terribly competitive by nature, privately I guess, so the goal of being the mayor of my locale, the mayor of the train station I use and the mayor of my place of work was my Spitzian, my Phelpsian sporting challenge.

And then, around two seconds after thinking how nice it would be, I was struck by the 'so what?' ness of it all. I do understand that it's used successfully by restaurants for example, with attendant sales promotions. But I am mayor of my local train station. A modicum of pride, a fleeting chuffedness, but not a red letter day or a conversation moment with my mother. You get a similar flash on your screen to the pic, there's not even a shiny silvery Sheriff's badge.

I am going to cling on to the thought that Foursquare may yet burn slowly and may yet hit the masses in a way hitherto unpredicted. Part of my competitive nature is the dogged sticking to something beyond the odds. For despite it's faults, I like it. It's intuitive, the app's good, the interface is good, if a little childish and I could see tangible benefits for companies using it. It could even be used in education as an attendance register, although the accuracy isn't top notch. So Foursquare is on the 'probably not' side of 'maybe', but I'm not quite for letting go yet.