Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2010 > April > 30 > Entry
Becoming a location pro on Gowalla/Foursquare (Part 3)
On Wednesday, we started talking about why you’d want to use Foursquare or Gowalla, two popular location-based social networks. Yesterday, we tackled setting up an account and getting started with your first check-in.
Today, we’ll conclude by discussing privacy and safety — an area that may keep some people away from these kinds of services entirely. I’ll also list the best tips I got from people who use them. A version of this story (minus the expert tips) will be in Saturday’s Life & Arts section.
How safe is it?
The obvious question: Is using these services safe, and should you be worried about your privacy?
Not everyone is comfortable sharing their location with the world, and Gowalla and Foursquare certainly seem geared at the same kinds of users who don’t mind posting photos of themselves on Facebook or broadcasting personal details on public Web sites.
Gowalla and Foursquare have privacy controls over how much information you have in your online profile. With a few adjustments, only friends you’ve approved and people in your location can see where you’ve checked in. Though the technology is certainly available to do it, neither service checks you in to any location automatically: Gowalla and Foursquare users only check in when they choose to do so.
You can see Gowalla’s privacy policies here and learn about Foursquare’s policies at this link. In Gowalla, access the privacy setting under Edit Profile. In Foursquare, go to Settings and check or uncheck options for My Privacy.
What it looks like on Gowalla:
What it looks like on Foursquare:
Still, some users opt to protect their privacy over the opportunity to stick around and socialize in a location: Several women I spoke to during SXSW told me they like using Foursquare and Gowalla, but typically check in on their way out of a location just to be safe.
You should avoid making your home a check-in spot (unless you really want your online friends to know your home address), and don’t accept friend invites from strangers.
Check yourself
Like every social networking platform, Gowalla and Foursquare have their own nuances and sets of unwritten rules that users learn as they explore each service.
For instance, nobody cares if you check in at a gas station unless you give some context as to why you’re there (with, say, a photo or short message). You don’t need to check in every day at work.
If you want to learn more about etiquette on Gowalla and Foursquare, see what your friends are doing before jumping in whole hog.
You can also find other in-depth guides to using Foursquare on Mashable and for Gowalla on this unofficial guide.
Good luck and have fun exploring Austin!
And finally, some tips from power users:
- Be more social. In-line commenting is cool, but the value is only there if you talk to each other.
- Take pictures. Pics of spots are fun to flip through.
- Don’t auto-Tweet/Facebook everything you do. Only cross-post the good content, where you actually say something.
- Don’t check in to places just because you’re driving by.
- Don’t make your home address a spot.
- Search for a spot before creating a new one. There are a lot of duplicates out there.
- Friend only people you’d have dinner with.
- Use a photo as your avatar. Some of us have multiple “Dan B.”s on our lists. Learn how to turn off pings, auto-posting to Twitter.
- Check privacy settings, you might be giving out your phone number/e-mail. Relatedly: don’t accept complete strangers as friends.
- Download app updates often: both services add bug fixes and new features frequently, makes the experience better with every new update.
- Overall, “the suggested places” are only as good as where your phone thinks you are, which is often far from where you’re standing.
- If you’re going to spend the first 10 minutes of lunch checking in to all the services, please get there 10 minutes before me.
- Use Check.in to check in to both services at the same time.
- Have something interesting to say if you’re going to post your checkin to Twitter. We don’t care that you’re at the gas station.
- It is a tad dangerous. Have to be smart. Don’t need to let everyone know when I am not home, so they can rob it!
- To get new bonus items in Gowalla, visit different TYPES of locations, not just stores/restaurants. And keep nine or fewer items in pack.
- Don’t get too granular; it takes long enough for nearby locations to load w/out having entries for bathrooms & patios in the list.
- Check it more than you check in. I’ve found friends nearby or remembered places I wanted to visit just by looking at my friends list.
My thanks to Robert Quigley, Joy Maher, Kathryn Yu, Julie Gomoll, Jenn Deering Davis, Matt Reyes, Laura P. Thomas, John Shepherd, Marla Erwin, Michelle Greer, Elizabeth Stoddard and Alyssa Gardina for the great suggestions!
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Internet, Phones, SXSW 2010
Comments
Austinites love to be heard, and we're giving you a bullhorn. We just ask that you keep things civil. Leave out the personal attacks. Do not use profanity, ethnic or racial slurs, or take shots at anyone's sexual orientation or religion. If you can't be nice, we reserve the right to remove your material and ban users who violate our Visitor's agreement. Click here to report comment abuse.
By Rachel Youens
May 1, 2010 10:13 AM | Link to this
Check.In is beautiful...I just need it to cover Whrrl and a few others as well. There's upwards of 20 location-based checkin services now and it's amazing how unremarkable and undifferentiated a lot of the ones just coming out are. I did a review of ten of them over at Appolicious and am getting ready to write a review on the next 10. I'm tested every single one of these and while I love the wealth of people on Foursquare and the clever badges, Whrrl has quickly become my favorite largely because of the photos and the rich way a profile page looks. You can check out my review of Foursquare, Gowalla and nine other checkins here: http://www.appolicious.com/curated-apps/288-location-location-location--where-will-you-be-making-your-locationbased-check-in