A brief review- FourSquare

I was told about a new game recently, known as FourSquare.  With most productsI have come to this general conclusion that one should test out products over a vareity of methods.

With that in mind- I tested the mobility of FourSquare.  Given that it is a game designed around the fact that you are “checking into” and”shouting out what you are doing” at places, with the option to Tweet it or SMS the game, it feels like a natural  to test it across a day in the variety of ways I would use it naturally.

I went out and about in NYC yesterday afternoon/evening with my new Blackberry Curve.  Beyond also trying to figure out how my nailposh red baby works, (which I mostly have), it was a good opportunity to explore FourSquare in what I percieved it to be its most natural medium- a mobile platform.

The bad -

Technically it is a social game- but I have no friends on it.    Because of the inherent sociability of the game (logging in your location), many locations have not been added.  If you are looking for something obscure, as I was at one point in the night (A place to pick up some kosher food after 11 pm near Lincoln Center), until a lot more users are added, with a variety of interests and needs, the game will feel very limiting.

It isn’t clear when texting, a great form of location checking in and shouting out, that you have to do the following format “@location doing ______.”  Nor is it clear that you should use the “@” sign.  The English language is such that it should be perfectly acceptable to text in “From ___, with love,” or “Sitting in a purple lounge chair @ ___________.”  Whether the code can handle English, our human construct, is a whole other question.

When one gets a reply back that a text is received-it is again not clear how many points one  has accumulated.  I realize that some places I went to my only have points if FourSquare does a deal with a retailer, otherwise it might be worth zero, (American Apparel comes to my mind.) but it would be nice to know how much one has accumulated automatically, when one receives a reply.  I can see the power-gamer sort appearing very quickly under this sort of system though, so one has to be careful what one does with the points system.

I personally would also like seeing FourSquared tied to events, or at the very least, sub-locations.  Some locations, such as Lincoln Center, are huge.  Midsummer Night Swing at Lincoln Center, is very specific.  So is Tully Hall.  This would encourage headcounts through shout-outs, (good for event planning- knowing how many people arrived at your last event), as well as get more specific when you have larger venues, where multiple events and places are included. (Large Museums for example- tie it to a gallery as much as the Museum, or college campuses in the middle of nowhere- tied to classrooms and classes).  By finding a way to segregate down to  the more specific, it could become a great way to  raise buzz about an event, or find people who you think likes the same sort of events you do.

I have some questions about the search.  It is clearly not a yellow-pages nor a white-pages.  However, nor are shout-outs semantically tagged, and nor are those in-the-know going to reveal all about these locations.  Yelp! and its spin-offs have the advantage of wordiness.  Again, with my kosher food escapade-those who keep kosher in Manhattan tend to know of such things (I was in the city as they say, I don’t know such things by heart).  They are in the know-but it may not be so clear from what they are saying that the restaurant is kosher, or vegan, or the location has bad lighting, but great food.  The search function, at least from my mobile- leaves this sort of information disjointed.  I almost want to plug FourSquare into Yelp!, its cousins, and the White/Yellow pages in order to resolve these issues faster.

It also is not clear that one can go back and change data entry of a location if one is the first one there.  I messed up a restaurants phone number last night while entering it on a phone.  It only has 212 in it.  I would like to change it- but that is not made explicit in the mobile website how it is to be done.

The Good-

Texting is easy.  Very Easy.  If one has unlimited text messages, it is great knowing that one can text and get a reply back with a confirmation that the message got through.  It is a great change in the technology of text message based services (I never used Twitter that way- so I cannot comment).  They also reply with friendly messages if everything is working correctly. I could seejust that use being popular with the student crowd in the US, who are less likely to have web-enabled phones, but are very likely to have unlimited texting.  A service like this for them would be very useful.

The mobile website is also very efficient and clean. It seems to show a direct relationship with the main website for computers (or what we conceive is a computer), plus is very clearly made for phone input. Some questions, for me, arise though with those with data plans but are not using a phone with a QWERTY keyboard system of any sort.  Texting might be more efficient- but the layout and design for a phone entry, for such items as to search for places to go and for entering new entries- the mobile web page, viewed on Opera, is superb.  One q1uestion I have is how easy is it to switch from Twitter/non-twitter mode from the phone’s panels. (Since I finally figured out how that works *blush*)

The idea of badges and prizes is a brilliant one.  This is especially true if long term, not all badges and prizes are inherently linked to the points system, and may even be traded in for  in person goods and services.  Another fun idea would be to trade with each other badges, especially if the badges have tangible value elsewhere.  Secondary markets might serve FourSquare well.

Things that need to be done ASAP:

Adding a way to map from location a, to location b.  If you see friends shouting out what they are doing- either have a secondary program called up with a blackberry/phone- or link out to Google maps to show how to get there.  Nothing like wasting time figuring out where the subway/bus and if it is running express or local.

Things I don’t understand-

How it works with Twitter- but that is my own fault. I need more practice with the multi-varied uses of twitter and see what works for me.  I’m slowly getting it, but it would be good to see that more explicitly made,especially to people who are newer to Twitter, et al.

Things I would like to see-

a fuller review for affordance is necessary-I did not use it efficiently with Twitter, nor directly from a computer.  It would be very interesting to see reactions from other people about what they think.