Dear Foursquare, it’s over between us. We’ve been at this four months and our test run of location-​​based ser­vices has been, well, unspec­tac­u­lar. After oscil­lat­ing between the Foursquare and Gowalla clients (both of which we found to be very flaky) we’ve seen lit­tle pay of for the poten­tial mar­ket­ing (and stalker) info we’ve pro­vided.Oh sure, we got twenty-​​bucks off here, a free nachos there, but over all the process con­sti­tutes a lot of time spent check­ing in for gen­er­ally no reward. It’s time bet­ter spent talk­ing to the friends who actu­ally took the time to be there with you instead of noti­fy­ing the friends across town who aren’t there.

 

Sorry Foursquare, Gowalla, and Face­book Places but were dump­ing you. We love us some social media and all, but you’re too high main­te­nance for just an occa­sional peck on the cheek. Maybe some­day you’ll make some­thing of your­self, but not today.

 

 

 

About the author

Jeff designs print and web expe­ri­ences for a vari­ety of clients and enjoys shar­ing what he learns along the way. He entered the indus­try at the split of web design from graphic design occurred and is now fas­ci­nated as the two dis­ci­plines are on the cusp of com­ing full cir­cle to merge into a new, media savvy gen­er­a­tion of design­ers. When not crazy busy, Jeff likes geo­caching and con­sum­ing copi­ous amounts of cof­fee. You should fol­low him on Twit­ter and Facebook.