OK that is officially the coolest Foursquare check-in ever, edging past NASA’s Space Station check-ins. Next question: Does Mars have any good bars or restaurants Curiosity can snag check-in discounts at? -Stacy
Total Foursquare check-ins in 2010 (from a user base of around 7 million): 381,576,305
Check-ins to voting booths on Election Day: 23,000
Check-ins to watching the Super Bowl: 200,000
f;asfklsdfk;lsdkf;lskdf;lskdf I CANNOT TAKE IT ANYMORE. At least thrice weekly (probably more; I just wanted to say “thrice”), I see some hand-wringing thinkpiece about “FourSquare.”
Today’s offender is a guest post via Business Insider (it’s clearly not a typo, as it says “FourSquare” twice). I’m probably being oversensitive, but this has been going on for months — and it’s tougher to forgive now that Foursquare is now a major player in the tech space.
Again, this post is far from the only offender. I’m sure that all of these articles are great — but when I see a major company’s name printed incorrectly, repeatedly, I just want to stop reading it.
K, rant over. Thanks for being my therapists. See you at next week’s session. -Julianne
I’m actually rather optimistic about Google overall. The inevitable doom of ChromeOS is due in part to the huge success of Android. As for social, I expect that Google will find greater success with their self-driving car and moon landing initiatives. I think it’s worth noting that the two most successful Facebook competitors, Twitter and Foursquare, were both started by people who were relatively unsuccessful at Google. 
— Facebook Will Thwart Google, Says Ex Googler (via switchedblog)
Source: Foursquare.com
As of today, users can add photos and comments to their check-ins on Foursquare.
Foursquare v2.2, according to the blog: “Photos from Instagram pushed to Foursquare will now be check-ins with photos (rather than just check-ins). Sightings on Foodspotting will be check-ins with photos. And picplz is the first service to allow check-in photos on both iPhone and Android.”
Foursquare hopes that integrating with apps like Instagram and Foodspotting will make the service more social.
It makes sense. If we’re going to keep checking in, they’ve got to keep it interesting. And what says interesting like having the ability to hipsterfy your photos (via Instagram) and push them to your local venues? Photos make the service more personal as does the ability to comment. And by adding photos, we’re creating a visual history of where we’ve been. Good move, Foursquare.
My only concerns are privacy and spam. Let’s hope users keep it classy when uploading tip and venue photos. While photos on check-ins are only visible to friends, tip and venue photos are public.
The last thing I want to see when checking in to my local is a tip photo of someone pulling the MySpace pose in front of a pumpkin pie (even with an Instagram filter that will surely make it look a bit more glamorous). -Laurie
It’s that time of the year again. Here are a couple moments from the last week’s tech holiday party circuit…
Spotted:
And overheard….
(Answer: No, you’ve just got to be worth $35 million.) -Laurie
One of the more amusing pitches I received in the last couple days was from Loopt founder Sam Altman. The email said along the lines of “we’re giving away iPod touches to people who get groped by TSA Agents.. any interest in covering?”
And then the details followed..
Source: Loopt.com
From Loopt’s blog ”Loopt is giving away 10 iPod Touches for TSA Touching. Just check into your airport on Loopt* on Wednesday, November 24.”
Not one to shy away from TSA touching, Foursquare came up with the “Baggage Handler” badge. Users can unlock the virtual badge when they check-in to the airport and include some key words (just imagine).
Unfortunately, I won’t be traveling this Thanksgiving. Too bad. I’m in the market for a new iPod.
Screenshot: CNNMoney
That zinger of a tweet is from Scott Cunningham, first found by Silicon Alley Insider.
As Mashable notes, Foursquare was down for more than nine hours on Monday. No one’s sure why yet, but a staffer told Mashable engineers “are working nonstop to get the site back up and running as quickly as possible. We’ll be putting up a detailed post mortem once we’ve resolved the issue [Tuesday].”
It’s telling that a Foursquare outage now warrants several news writes; mere months ago, my roommate Steve and I were the only ones I knew using the social location service. I soon lost interest in checking in — I usually already knew where Steve was on a given Saturday night — but it seems that the service is catching on. -Julianne
