Foursquare and Perception of Space

I have been using Foursquare for some time now. For those that don’t know Foursquare is a social web based game in which you use your mobile phone or computer to check in to different locations. Every time you check in you earn points and you can also unlock different badges for completing different tasks. If you are the person with the most check ins at a location, you become ‘mayor’ of that place. When you check in at a place you can also access information about who else is at that location. In this way Foursquare can become an opening for meeting other people, that you might only know through other web 2.0 services. Say, if you follow someone on Twitter and then add them on Foursquare and you both check in at the same bar, at the same time, then you have an opening for locating that person and striking up a conversation. You can of course also see where you friends recently have checked in and if they are nearby, you can swing by and say hello. So besides the game part, which might seem a bit silly for some, Foursquare does have power to influence or social interactions with other people and can be used to make new social connections.

But there are other effects of using Foursquare that I have noticed. When I fire up my Foursquare app on my mobile it tells me my location via GPS and provides a list of known nearby venues that I can check into. If the one I am looking for isn’t known by Foursquare, I can add the venue myself and tag it with things such as ‘supermarket’, ‘bar’, ‘playground’ or whatever category the venue will fit into if I wish to do so. This has impact on the way I perceive the space around me.

First of all, when I see the list of venues, I become aware of a lot of places that I cannot see with the naked eye. It might be shops or theaters or many other things, but it can also be people’s homes or offices that I don’t have any access to, but that I can see on Foursquare. Maybe the names of these semi-private venues will hold some information. For instance at my workplace someone in one of the offices at the first floor has added the coffee machine as a venue. They check into it when they make coffee and I presume that they did it as a fun way keep check on who made coffee last or who makes coffee most maybe? Maybe they brag to each other about being the mayor of the coffee machine and try to oust each other? I don’t know for sure, but through Foursquare I became aware of this venue and the name of it set off some speculation about what they were using that venue for and gave me a new awareness of space and the people who move around in it. Every time I look at the list of venues around me I get access to information like this. But I also get reminded about ‘forgotten’ venues. Maybe it is a shop that I knew about, but had forgotten was there or it could be something else which I have certain memories about that I can suddenly remember when I see the name on the list.  In a way Foursquare gives me a sense of intimacy with the space that I travel in. As if I can get under it’s skin.

Then there is the whole competition element. You are battling for ownership of the space you move around in. Trying to get and hold on to as many mayorships as possible. In order to win a mayorship there has to be a defined venue that you can conquer. But what does it take for somewhere to be a place? At the University I attend, the whole faculty of humanities is of course a venue. When I get there, I check into the faculty. But, the faculty is a big place, and therefore I have made the classrooms and some of the other places  I frequent into individual venues. What Foursquare has done is to make me think about what ‘a place’ is, and compartmentalise space into new smaller sections in order to conquer them and show other people that I exist. This production of new venues is also a challenge to others. Because now there are new venues to conquer and compete about.  When I add a new venue I have to think about what warrants this space as a particular venue in itself. Foursquare is a way of ordering the space around you for a particular purpose, and in that process it produces new awareness of that space.

Foursquare can be thought about as an extra layer of information about the space around you which you can access through your electronic devices. In this way it does have similarities with augmented reality. But though I have AR apps on my phone, I haven’t used them for that much yet. Whereas Foursquare is something I use every day. The above are just some of the things I have noticed when using the service. If you have other thought, feel free to add them in the comments.

You can also add me on Foursquare.