Foursquare, the location-based social networking service, is about to activate Push Notifications in the new version of its iPhone app, due shortly. I’ve been beta testing it out for the past week, and I’m happy to report that it works brilliantly. But be warned: Some of you will not like this idea.
Applications using Push have been rolling out over the past week. None so far have been bigger than the IM clients like AIM and Beejive, as instant messaging is an obvious use of Push messages. But location can work quite well too, as Foursquare is proving, but only for a certain kind of location app.
Foursquare is all about explicitly “checking-in” places. That is to say, when you go somewhere, you have to boot up the app, load the site or send a text to let it know you want to check-in there. It doesn’t do it automatically, even if you have the app open. Because of this, Push Notifications make sense, since they ping your followers when you check-in somewhere. And you really shouldn’t have to worry about privacy because you are the one checking in to a place, on purpose, to let the people you know — that you personally allowed to let follow you — see where you are.
Of course, regardless of that, there will be people who don’t like this concept. Some have been too liberal with who they allow to follow them. Others won’t like the idea of someone getting pinged every time they check in somewhere. I imagine it will be kind of like how some users at first didn’t like the Facebook News Feed because it made the information updates from your profile more obvious — even though all that information was already there for people to see.
Others won’t like the concept of their own phone getting pinged every time a friend checks in somewhere. But, of course, you can always turn the Push Notifications off. Right now, the service is wrestling with the idea of having them set to “on” as the default when you download the new version, co-founder Dennis Crowley tells us.
While that may sound like a bad idea to power users of the service who may follow dozens of people, Crowley notes that most users follow far fewer than that. And so if the average user only follows say, 10 people, the Push Notifications should be a welcome way to follow that number of people.
And you can toggle notifications on a per-user basis. Though in this version of the app (1.3), it’s somewhat of a pain to do because you have to click on a user’s profile, then click on the “Pings” tab, then flip the switch on “Checkin Messages.” In the future, Crowley hopes there will be an area of the app that contains a list of all your friends and you can easily go through that to toggle them on or off. Right now, you can do that on the Foursquare website on this page.
And it’s easy to turn all these notifications on or off. In the upper right side of the app there is a “Ping: On/Off” area. Clicking on that takes you to a Pings page that gives you a few options. One is to turn checkin messages off until the following morning (great for if you’re going to bed). Another allows you to turn them off until you turn them back on in the same menu.
Again, I understand that a lot of people won’t like this idea of being able to “stalk” your friends’ whereabout. But this is where social networking is heading. Just imagine being hungry around lunchtime or being in the mood for a happy hour drink, and getting pinged with a message showing you that a friend is doing one of those activities. These types of apps actually put the “social” — as in, real life social — in “social networking.”
Foursquare 1.3 with Push Notifications should be available soon in the App Store for free.
Let’s just hope that no one has any enemies at Foursquare. Either they could stalk you, or do some false pinging. Don’t want the wife to see that you were at a Gentlemen’s Club, when you really weren’t.
“Honey, that was a false ping. I thing I have some enemies at Foursquare”
See how it could work the other way?
If she believes you, then yes. My point was that it might be risky to use the service, like the article states.
The service might be risky because of many other things but not necessarily because of enemies at foursquare. We never think of enemies at Google, facebook, twitter etc. do we?
Except you forget the part where the guy is ALWAYS wrong. It’s better to avoid something than attempt to get out of it. Whether you are sincere or not.
WTF kind of comment is that?
Awesome
So does this mean I will be able to know in *real-time* all the hipster hangouts in SF?
That is exactly what it means.
I like the idea of push notifications for foursquare, but the killer feature I really need in it is support for St. Louis!
But when will foursquare add various places in rural North Carolina and Montana…
I think this is like Brightkite.com
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have location-based pinging?
If you checkin in downtown Palo Alto, you can request pings from any other friends who checkin there. There could be a super-ping option that alerts you to any public checkins in the area.
Not liking the idea of stalking your friends?? what do you think facebook is all about?
If you don’t own an iPhone…
… you can do the same on your good old phone using MobiLuck
There goes your privacy…
I don’t see a problem with this at all. Similar to BrightKite and Google’s Latitude, foursquare is about explicitly broadcasting your location to your friends. If you’re not comfortable with them know about your check-ins, you shouldn’t have friended them on this service in the first place.
Now I only wish Foursquare was in Helsinki so I could see where all the hipsters hung out in this town.
Isn’t that the point of this service?
(and by the way, Dodgeball, the predecessor to foursquare had this 3 years ago via text message. nothing too earth shattering here.)
no, the point was that push notifications work on the foursqure iphone app (no need for text messages, which require payment by both dev and user). foursquare is a direct descendant of dodgeball.
Anyone using the non-iphone version of Foursquare already gets pings on every check-in (via email or twitter dm)… this isn’t that new.
Centrl, my fav lbsn is also doing this, they announced on their blog: http://centrl.com
I worry about privacy too so I have been avoiding most lbsn but a friend of mine recently turned me on centrl.com. I use the IPhone app and the latest version has push notification for private messages (but only if you are mutual contacts) and enough attention paid to privacy that I feel comfortable using it. You can routinely see me wandering the streets of many cities in the US but on my terms which includes running under a different screen name so I can be anonymous…
Is it just me or is it impossible to use loopt? It is like they have spent no time at all on user experience. I constantly ask my girlfriend how to use the stupid thing because it is counter intuitive.
And foursquare. I was in Denver and foursquare said it had no idea where I was and asked if I wanted to play in NYC. A few minutes later and it correctly identified Denver and let me move around there. How hard is to figure out that Denver is closer to Denver than Manhattan is? Seriously now, even I can do that without a slide rule and a beer.
Hoping that you’re not getting my check-ins. You know how much I love to spam Twitter.
Centrl all the way…