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Why I’ll be checking-out of Foursquare for good.
Location, location, location.
Faster than you can say ‘negative equity’, the age-old adage of the property business that ‘location is king’ now rings as true online as it does on the pavement. SXSW Interactive (the annual love-in in Austin, Texas for web entrepreneurs and start-ups, which launched the likes of Twitter in 2007) this spring became a battleground for two new location-based services, Foursquare and Gowalla, with the former already topping one-million users and the subject of a speculative $125 million bid from Yahoo Inc., which suggests that pinning-down our virtual identities to physical locations could be big business.
As Robin might exclaim, ‘Holy location-targeted advertising potential, Batman!’ – and he’d almost certainly be right.
But aside from the obvious business benefits to advertisers, why would I want to reveal my location to all-and-sundry randoms on the internet? What’s in it for me? And do I have any choice?
Foursquare
Not only does my camera remind me where I over-exposed another perfectly good photograph, but now Twitter has also taken to geo-tagging each of my tweets. As if that wasn’t enough, for the last few months I actively ‘check-in’ to venues I visit with Foursquare. In the same way that a gamer unlocks achievements on Xbox Live, Foursquare offers ‘badges’ to users who, for example, check-in to more than 25 venues or more than 4 nights in a row (the ‘bender’ badge). I’m still trying to figure out ways to snag the ‘I’m on a boat’ badge. What’s more, with frequent check-ins you may get to become a venue’s ‘mayor’ – but risk being toppled from your perch if others check-in more times than you (and it hurts, let me tell you). Before long, I’m mindlessly checking-in almost everywhere I go trying to satisfy my competitive streak (and, most importantly, trying to regain the mayorship of Mortlake Train Station from my arch-nemesis, ‘Alen M’).
However, in embracing the location-based social networking fad, I’m aware that the boundaries between my virtual and physical social networks are becoming increasingly blurred. And I’m not at all sure I’m completely comfortable with it. Recently I came up against an example of where my virtual and real existences very nearly crossed over, an experience that may make me a little less prolific with Foursquare.
From time to time, just out of sheer curiosity, I like to check out tweets that have been posted near to where I live – call it being a virtual nosy-neighbour, if you will (it’s certainly more discreet than the altogether less-virtual curtain-twitching approach my actual neighbour employs). On one occasion I saw some interesting tweets from somebody who works in the same industry as I and decided to follow them on Twitter, to which they duly reciprocated. We occasionally commented on each others’ tweets and generally carried on living the Twitter dream. A few weeks later I discovered they were also a Foursquare user, so we duly added each other to our respective networks and, alongside all our other followers and followees, we innocently kept up to date with where we were checking-in.
Then one Friday night, as I was making my way back home from another check-in at my local train station, a notification eagerly popped up on my iPhone telling me that this very same virtual buddy had, at that very moment, checked-in to a bar. No big deal, except that it was a bar outside which I coincidentally found myself standing.
Surely this was social networking nirvana, a triumph of Web 2.0, geo-locationary interaction? Wasn’t this the whole point of location services like Foursquare and Gowalla, to discover new venues and meet new people? All I had to do was to stride confidently into the bar, find my virtual chum and say ‘Hi’ and, um…
Get Crunked with Foursquare
I carried on walking home.
For me it was all just a bit too spooky. The thing is this: I’m a married man with a three month old baby and this ‘virtual friend’ was (and indeed still is, at least I think) a woman. In spite of my being a socially brave sort, randomly appearing in a bar and going up to a woman who I’ve virtually, but never physically, met and saying what fundamentally amounts to, ‘Hi, I just saw your profile on the internet and wanted to say hello’, all felt just a little bit too sleazy.
Perhaps I simply want my virtual friends to remain virtual, and I’m as scared to encounter rejection and disappointment in my virtual social networks as I am in my real-life ones – the key difference is that ultimately I’m much more in control of my online interactions, and mixing the two might be akin to some Matrix-style revelation. Which is a shame really, as it’s exactly this breaking down of virtual boundaries that Foursquare is out there for – that is until Yahoo, Google or some other advertising powerhouse get hold of them, begin mining our every movement and pumping us with even more targeted advertising.
So, I guess I’ve failed you Foursquare, maybe it’s time I checked-out instead. But only once I’ve knocked that pretender to the throne Alen M. off of his smug mayoral perch at Mortlake Station…
Check out the battle for the Mayorship Mortlake Train Station by checking in here.
mflow seeks its Stephen Fry, instead finds God.
Described as a mixture of iTunes and Twitter, mflow is the latest in a steady stream of online music services originating from the UK. After spending several months refining itself in a private beta available to about 15,000 invitees, mainly music industry-types and journalists, it finally opened its arms to the general public’s ears last week with a slightly muted fanfare.
NME are one of the first to go with the mflow
Dubbed ‘Twitter – The Musical’, mflow aims to combine the best bits of tweeting with the best bits of, um, iTunes-ing. Fundamentally, how it works is that, like Twitter, you follow people in whose tastes you’re interested and listen to the music that they recommend (or “flow”, to use the mflow lingo). You get to listen each flowed track once in its entirety, but if you want to listen to it in full again then you’ll have to buy it – mflow tracks set you back around the same as iTunes’ at about 79p to 99p or less when sold as part of an album.
But here’s the unique bit: should you buy a track that’s been recommended (sorry, flowed) by somebody else then they get a cut (currently 20%) of the money you spent. To keep the money where it matters, this money must be spent within mflow. It’s an intriguing double-whammy that plays on your both your esteem and your pocket: when flowing not only do you get that warm fuzzy feeling that your followers like the tracks you’re recommending so much that they’re buying them, but you’re also making a tidy bit of credit on the side.
Music taste is highly personal and emotionally-driven and mflow’s model intelligently plays on this to the full. It’s a clever, potentially self-sustaining eco-system that we reckon could work, and its plans to integrate into existing social networks like Twitter and Facebook mean that it’s sure to get some good further exposure with people who’re most likely to ‘get’ it.
Other online music services have tried in the past to create a sustainable business model but Apple’s bite of the pie might just be too big. Services like Last.fm and Spotify may have offered much to the music consumer but they’re still not turning any profits for their owners (Last.fm has been trying since 2002) and there’s huge debate as to whether they’re actually supporting the artists who make the music in the first place. Only last week it was revealed that Lady GaGa and her track Poker Face – a big hit with over a million plays on Spotify and one of the most popular songs on the site – received a cheque for a miserly $167. Informtion Is Beautiful recently published a stunning graphic answering the question, “How much do music artists earn online?” revealing that, in order to earn the same sum (a minimum monthly wage of £1,160) as 150 CD albums sold by an online retail site such as CDBaby.com, they’d have to sell just over 1,200 album downloads on iTunes. Quite a hike. But to achieve the same earnings on Spotify would require a staggering 4.5 million plays of a track. If this is the future of music then there won’t be quite so many musicians, or half as much music choice, for listeners to enjoy.
For mflow, its longer-term success might depend upon two key things:
- for sure its music catalogue and whether they are able to sign-up either the volume or the right market of artists and labels that its prospective users want keep on listening to, recommending and buying;
- almost certainly mflow’s ability to find its very own Stephen Fry, a special someone who can do for this fledgling service what Britain’s favourite Tweeter almost single-handedly achieved for Twitter when it first hatched.
Why sacrifice valuable Sunday morning hangover time when you can follow God on mflow?
During the private beta period the guys at mflow tried to sign-up as many potentially influential people as possible, presumably with the intention of creating some of these musical beacons for new users to follow. Chatting with the mflow team the day before the launch last week they were very keen to point us in the direction of some shining lights – Phil Jupitus, Island Records and The NME all have high-profile channels, as does Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs and God (I’m not kidding, whoever he – or she – is has thousands of followers). mflow also have their own channels, each dedicated to specific genres of music – follow these channels and you’ve a pretty good idea of the kind of music you’re going to be flowed.
But as yet there’s still no single standout figure who represents, champions and epitomises mflow. Perhaps this is asking too much from a single man. Whilst many of us may have been a tad bored of Stephen Fry’s tweets long before his self-imposed Twexile, ignoring his (or anyone else’s) 140 character missives is pretty straightforward. However, choosing to ignore 3 or 4 minutes’ worth of music that makes your skin squirm is another matter (of course, ‘next track’ buttons are available within mflow).
In fact mflow may need several Stephen Fry-like pioneers to appeal to the various musical genres it represents.
Or perhaps mflow just needs a God. Oh, it has already, and as it happens he is currently flowing “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret (Album Version)” by Queens of the Stone Age. Who’d have thought…
Want to follow the author’s flows? Find him on mflow at ‘bigdavemac’. Find out more about mflow at http://www.mflow.com/
