Foursquare: How Much “Checking-In” Is Too Much?

I jumped on the Foursquare bandwagon relatively early. I was at a bar in the Lower East Side sharing in some revelry (and one too many Arrogant Bastards) when my friend Nando said, “Hey, Bebe,” (his nickname for me), “Are you on Foursquare yet?” Ever one to be a part of the latest social media venture, I quickly found myself with a new way to let the world (at least the world involving my menagerie of drinking pals and technologically-forward friends) know exactly where I was from the moment I “checked in.”

As with most of the other start-ups I had blindly agreed to become a member of (Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter), I didn’t initially “get” Foursquare. Why, on earth, would my seven Foursquare friends need to see that I was at Bar X when I was undoubtedly already with THEM at Bar X? It’s a little like arriving at a house party with your friend Veronica and then turning to poor, unsuspecting Veronica and saying “Oh. Hey! You’re here!” Obviously that’s how all of these new social media apps start. I can just imagine Mark Zuckerberg turning to his early Facebook cohorts and saying, “Dude! You just updated that you were hanging with me at Brass Monkey…you only have two friends on here, and one of them is ME!” (Of course, early Facebook predated the iPhone and Blackberry and thus there was not yet the invention of such an “app,” but let’s go with it…). This is, of course, how all of these things start.

Foursquare launched in March 2009. I became a member shortly thereafter. At that point, there were just a few thousand members. There are now an estimated 1.3 million avid Foursquarers. That’s a hugely successful climb. I anxiously played the game for a solid month, checking in whenever I remembered to – usually when out with other Foursquare friends, or when I found myself at a hotspot and wished to let my few friends know that I was at said hotspot. Competitive by nature, I played for the badges – checking into ten different venues earns you the “Adventurer” badge, twenty-five gets you the “Explorer” badge, fifty and you’re a “Superstar.” Who doesn’t want to be a superstar? And of course, there’s the “Local” (three stops at any one venue in a week), “Super User” (thirty check-ins in one month), “Bender” (four-plus check-ins in a single night), and a myriad of other badges, all of which back in the good ol’ days of Foursquare probably meant that you were a party animal and were most likely also receivng the “Crunked” and “Animal House” badges as well.

Essentially, early Foursquare was a broadcast of how often and where you were getting your libations. I played the game fairly consistently for about two months. Then, having grown bored with the whole charade, I fell off of the map for several months, checking in only very rarely when, again, I remembered to. Then, about six months ago, whilst bored at some downtown watering hole, I decided to go to the website, PlayFoursquare.com (now FourSquare.com — VC money means buying your chosen domain name!), and discovered that not only was there an app for Foursquare, but that I also had seventeen friend requests. My list of friends had nearly just tripled! I downloaded the app, accepted all of the requests, and suddenly found myself being notified via pop-up every time one of my “friends” found themselves out and about.

But the game had changed a bit. My friends were checking in regularly, and not just during socially acceptable drinking hours, but at all times of the day. They were checking in from Dos Caminos at 1 p.m., the East River Park at noon, Barnes & Noble at four-thirty, Penn Station when headed east for a fabulous South Hampton weekend, and for God’s sake – Starbucks at 8:47 in the morning! Now I have a lot of – ahem – “fun” friends, but surely they were not imbibing the devil’s liquid at these hours. I realized that Foursquare had expanded. It was no longer just an opportunity to let your friends know how fabulous you were by telling them which bar/club you were at…now you were just narcissistically letting them know “WHERE YOU WERE,” like sixteen year olds who have sworn to call mom and dad every hour, updating them on where they are with their current Mustang-driving pimply crush.

Initially, this infuriated me. I rallied with my OG Foursquare friends at Mexican Radio one evening, and as suspected, they were as much of the conservative mind-set as I: Foursquare was only to be used when alcoholic beverage was in hand and you had debaucherous plans for the evening. We even made a pact to delete each other as friends should we begin to check in arbitrarily. I vowed not to, and for several months I kept my oath. But in the end, you must keep up with the masses, so as to not get trampled.

So, yes. YES! I admit — I check into Starbucks when I’m getting my morning coffee, the East River Park before I begin my marathon-training runs, Kinkos on Park Avenue South when I need to make copies, Sephora when I need new lipgloss, the Union Square Green Market (because it’s usually a “Trending Topic” when I’m there — and I love a good trend), and a myriad of other places. I even added my office as a “New Venue” on Foursquare because I became angry that other people were gaining mayorships by continuously checking into their respective places of employment. (And yes, I AM the mayor of my six person office!) I have become my own GPS and Big Brother.

I feel as though I have adapted to these Foursquare evolutionary changes with relative aplomb, but there is one area in which I absolutely refuse to budge. I do not, under any circumstances, think that it is acceptable to check in to one’s own HOME. In my mind, this offends a multitude of standards. For one, you will surely gain a cheap mayorship (unless, of course, you have a leech of a significant other who stays at your place when you go to work and consistently checks in when he or she comes back from walking the dog, dropping off laundry, grabbing lunch, and going to the park). Secondly, we, as your Foursquare friends cannot possibly compete with your mayorship…unless we are the leeches of the couch-surfing type, at which point your “venue” just becomes tragically pathetic. And, lastly, with the escalation of people joining Foursquare and befriending you, despite the fact that they may not actually KNOW you, you are putting yourself at risk by volunteering up your address. It’s not just an ethically troublesome endeavor to add your home as a venue. It’s a safety concern as well. Of course, you could always “hide” your home check-in, but I’ve always thought that was a bit shady. (Oh, and also — if you’re checking in at home on a Friday night at 2 a.m., while we are still “partying-it-up,” you make us feel like losers…or brand yourself as a loser, depending on the scenario. Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation).

I spent a lovely Memorial Day weekend in Boston, and on the bus ride back, I accidently clicked on the Foursquare app (which, naturally, is now one of the top five tabs on my Blackberry), and the first place it “found me” was a Bolt Bus heading from Boston to New York. I was not on the Bolt Bus. I was, in true money-pinching fashion, on the Fung Wah Chinatown bus. The Bolt Bus, true to it’s name, was ahead of us. But apparently someone had deemed it necessary to create a venue for that particular 11 a.m. bus meandering from Boston to New York Penn Station. It’s a traveling vehicle! How can this possibly be considered a “venue”?!

As it’s structured now, there is no way to prevent people from checking into Foursquare from home — or bus, or whatnot. Perhaps that’s the way the developers intended it; chaos theory without reign against future expansion — throw a pencil-at-the-ceiling-and-see-what-happens kind of scenario. But I think perhaps we need a call to arms. Checking in has gotten out of control. What’s next? Checking in from the toilet at the Met? Or from the North-west corner of 26th and Lexington? Or from seat number 765 at CitiField? Let’s simplify and solidify the rules. If Foursquare keeps going at this rate, it will all end up as a complete and massive train wreck. Call me old school, but I miss the olden days of drunken bar and snooty restuarant check-ins.

As for the rest of the time (you know, when I’m at Duane Reade, Trader Joe’s, and Loehmann’s), let’s keep those moments private, sacred. A certain amount of anonymity is sexy, I think.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.