If addiction is the second stage of Foursquare use, I am still at stage one, curiosity. But at least I’m a curious Mayor.
Blogger Dan Macsai described the Five Stages of Foursquare Use — curiosity, addiction, socialization, greed, apathy — in a blog post. While it was amusing, he didn’t really address the factor that’s been getting lots of discussion recently on Twitter, which Brian Moylan addressed in If You Use Foursquare, You Are an Annoying Jackass.
I do use Foursquare, so perhaps I am an annoying jackass (for that matter, I might have been an annoying jackass long before I started checking in digitally). But I’ve adjusted how I interact with other social media on Foursquare, in hopes of being less annoying.
I use Foursquare because I am curious about the possibilities for location-based socialization, information and commerce. I don’t think Foursquare has unlocked all those possibilities, but I am pleased to see someone trying. I also joined Gowalla, but I have used Foursquare longer and use it more often to check in. (I checked in faithfully at the American Society of News Editors convention this week, one of the few ASNE members to do so.)
I’ll blog more about location-based tools as I learn more. But for this post, I want to share what I have learned about synchronizing social media tools.
Social media can be time-consuming and people who use multiple tools can save time by syncing them, so content from one posts automatically on another. But you need to think about how well they play together.
When I first started enjoying Twitter, I started neglecting Facebook. I only had so much time, and I found Twitter more fun and Facebook more annoying, so I spent my time with Twitter.
This was before Farmville and Mafia Wars caught on, but Facebook friends kept inviting me to play games like one (can’t remember the name) that pronounced us soulmates if we liked the same movies. I’m sorry, but your soulmate is someone with whom you go to a movie (chick flick) even if you don’t think you’ll like it. I was new enough to Facebook that I didn’t understand that my “friends” weren’t personally asking me to play the game. They were just checking (or failing to uncheck) a box that said something like “ask your friends to play,” when it truthfully should have said “annoy people you’ve friended.”
I became more of a presence on Facebook when I learned of an application that let me post my tweets automatically to Facebook (except my @ replies). I went from seldom updating Facebook to updating several times a day. When I was live-tweeting an event, I’m sure I was more bothersome to some Facebook friends than Farmer Tony Soprano. Only one friend complained about all my tweets appearing as Facebook updates. But lots of my tweets were welcome, at least to some friends. Suddenly I had people liking my status updates and replying conversationally, even if the only time I used Facebook was when I received notifications of their comments. (And our interactions led me to use Facebook more.)
However, I have declined most other opportunities, through Facebook Connect, to post other content automatically to Facebook. I don’t want to spam my Facebook friends with everything from all of my online activity.
So that bit of syncing worked pretty well. When LinkedIn and Twitter announced mutual syncing, I took a different approach. I mix personal and professional matters in my tweets, and some of those tweets wouldn’t work as well as my status updates for LinkedIn, which is a professional network. So I set up syncing to post updates to LinkedIn only if I use the hashtag #li. I usually forget to use it (in writing this, I realized I forgot to post a link to my last blog post on LinkedIn), but sometimes use it when I am tweeting a link to a new blog post. That leaves something professional at all times on my LinkedIn update, though not always something current.
But, since most of my travel is for professional trips, I did sync LinkedIn with TripIt, which, as I’ve blogged before, helped me connect with some friends on a business trip.
When I started using Publish2 to share links about news and journalism, I was pleased that it allowed syncing with Twitter and Delicious. My Delicious account had fallen into disuse, but now is active with the links I post using Publish2.
I started using Flickr a couple years before I started on Twitter. So I was pleased when Flickr allowed syncing with Twitter. I can email a photo from my phone to Flickr, type a tweet in the subject line and it posts to Twitter with a link to the photo on Flickr.
Through syncing, I appear active on some social networks (Friendfeed, Plaxo and Cliqset) that I seldom (in some cases never) actually use.
So when I started using Foursquare, my inclination (my default setting, I guess) was to sync it with Twitter. But I saw that the default tweet from Foursquare was a boring (and kine of annoying) pro forma announcement of where I was. And, given that Foursquare was promoting itself as a network based around restaurants and other entertainment venues, it had an uncomfortable overlap with the irritating (and usually inaccurate) stereotype that Twitter is full of trivia like what people are eating for breakfast. After one or two check-ins, I turned off the synchronization option for tweeting every check-in. I let Foursquare tweet a few badges and mayorships (I’m mayor of three restaurants in the Washington area and two in Cedar Rapids, which tells you more about Foursquare than it does about me; I haven’t fixed any potholes or kissed any babies other than my granddaughter), then turned off the synchronization altogether.
As more tweeps joined Foursquare, I simultaneously felt mildly annoyed at the tweets from people who synced the two services and amused at the sarcasm from tweeps who mocked and criticized Foursquare postings that appeared as tweets. Their irritation reminded me a lot of the usual response to Twitter users in the early days (and still occasionally) from people who weren’t using Twitter.
The latest version of the Foursquare iPhone app offers a window into which you can write a customized tweet. I used that last night at a favorite Reston restaurant, and I’ll probably use it again when I think I have something tweetworthy to say as I check in. But I’ll leave my check-in setting for Twitter off, because I don’t normally tweet about lunch or dinner.
I’m still learning about social media (I’m skeptical of anyone claiming to be an expert or guru; “student” is the most anyone should claim about a field that’s this new and changing this fast). But here’s what I’ve learned about syncing different tools:
- Thoughtful syncing saves time and multiplies your social interactions.
- Clumsy syncing annoys your friends.
- Try syncing various social tools, but adjust to try to reach that thoughtful mix.
Great post, Steve. My thoughts on Foursquare is that you have to be selective with the syncing. The nice thing about syncing Foursquare with Twitter is that you’re still able to be selective with what gets automatically posted to your Twitter account. For example, I have my Twitter account synced but can chose what check-in on Foursquare to tweet with each check-in.
Some services you can sync up automatically, others, as you mention, you have to be careful with.
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It seems to me that there is a direct correlation between the value a user places on a social network and the likelihood they are to sync services.
In the earlier days of Twitter, I followed people who used Twitterfeed, that is synced a RSS feed to Twitter, to post every blog post and in some cases comment to Twitter. Few people (that I follow, anyway) have continued to do that as Twitter has grown to be a more valuable network.
Compare that to FriendFeed, which made syncing dozens of services ridiculously easy. It never really caught on and was bought by Facebook, primarily for talent on staff.
I’m not sure if over-syncing leads to a less-valuable network, or if people are more likely to automate services that they don’t value.
And an aside: I found the tweets complaining about Foursquare tweets to be just as annoying as the Foursquare tweets they were complaining about.
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[…] Syncing social tools (especially Foursquare) requires some thought (stevebuttry.wordpress.com) […]
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I don’t link Foursquare and Twitter for safety/privacy reasons. I feel more comfortable linking it to Facebook, where I have more of a closed community.
Because my personal and professional lives have blended (perhaps for the worse – hard to say at this juncture), I have a lot of FB people who are more fans of my work than actual friends. For that reason, when I’m working on a story, I tend to update my FB page with Foursquare statuses as a mark of transparency, letting readers know where I am, what I’m covering, and what I’m seeing. I suspect it’s annoying though unless someone cares about the story I’m writing.
Tough call with all social media. Sometimes the most mundane thing results in a wonderfully deep discussion with a near-stranger. Other times, you pour your heart into something and no one cares.
One thing is for sure: Foursquare makes me want to go more interesting places. A quick run-through of my mayorships tells me I eat way too much fast food and spend an awful lot of time at gas stations and Walmarts.
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I think this is a very important post about how people use social media.
First, I really like how you describe so well the flow of social media use: You use one thing a lot, then your interest wanes, and then you use something else.
I agree that synching of social media is vital. I use Selective Tweets to send only certain tweets (tagged with #fb) to Facebook. I did that because I too in those early days of updating my Facebook status from Twitter was annoying my Facebook friends. Or at least I was annoying my husband who was honest enough to tell me.
As for FourSquare, right now I have my setting update only mayorships on Twitter. My thinking was that at least for me getting a mayorship is a rare enough even that it might be of interest to some of my Twitter followers. (At least the ones who live near me.) A fellow student and I went back and forth for a week or so alternating as mayor of the Maxwell School at Syracuse. Folks on Twitter who know us both chimed in on Twitter about the back and forth.
However, I’m open to the idea that even announcing my mayorships might be annoying.
Perhaps there will be a way on Twitter evenutally, where you could select which people get the FourSquare updates. I doubt folks who follow me from other communities care that I just became mayor of the local bagel shop, but my local yokel tweets might. At least a wee bit.
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I occasionally use the window in the 4sq app to craft a tweet, then click to share that check-in with my Twitter friends. And so far, I have resisted the urge to reply to anyone who tweets that they just unlocked the “super user” badge that maybe it’s time to unlock the “Unsync Your Foursquare” badge.
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[…] For another look at the sync or not debate, read this post by Steve Buttry. […]
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[…] My Syncing social tools (especially Foursquare) requires some thought […]
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[…] blogged about how annoying it is for people to auto-sync their Foursquare and Twitter accounts, so that every check-in or every mayorship becomes an automatic tweet. (I do selectively tweet […]
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