Joined Foursquare

I just joined Foursquare yesterday and to my not-so-great surprise none of my friends were on it. Checked my e-mail contacts, Facebook friends and Twitter followers and I got nada, zip, zero and nothing. My joining was accelerated by almost everyone talking about it on podcasts due to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

I had to choose between it and Gowalla, but it seemed that foursquare was more popular, so that's where I went to.

Still I wanted to try it out for myself this weekend when I go out to watch the Hurt Locker. Gonna be posting my review of that movie probably on Monday.

I'll also be getting my PS3 back from the shop today after it Amber Light of Death'd on me. Hopefully I will get to finish Star Ocean: The Last Hope International and share my thoughts about it.

Getting back to foursquare though, I won't be delving into it very much because I haven't played with it extensively, but I feel that it could be a very popular tool, but only in certain uses. Most commentators and pundits have talked about location-based services especially in the context of social experiences and marketing.

I agree that these are two use-cases where this service has the highest probability of succeeding. Another I think would be Augmented Reality. Foursquare, Gowalla and other services could integrate augmented reality services or have built-in augmented reality features in the future with their services thus opening further potential to monetize not only though advertising, but interactive experiences that allow easy ordering or perusing of a menu or check item availability.

Still, that is still far off into the future (5 years maybe? Funny how short the future has become with technology developing so fast.) and for now, I am satisfied to get maybe at least one of my friends to join.