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Why I Deleted Foursquare and Gowalla after SXSW

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 - 1:18 pm - Not-Sales

I’m not as concerned about privacy as Andrew Hyde is but he brings up some really good points in his post from a month or so back.

I’m not even really so worried about the ego stuff as Tyler Hurst is in his recent post.

They were super useful at SXSW rather than texting all of the people I wanted to catch up with for dinner or drinks, I could see where they checked in recently (or if they had) and plan that way. But I still ended up texting or DMing them from Twitter anyway most of the time. They’re great sources of past behavior but if someone checked in at IronWorks 20 minutes ago I have no way of knowing if they checked in at the beginning of their meal, their wait in line, or sometime in the middle of lunch. Still it was interesting enough to at least catch the trends of where people I like to hang out with were at for panels etc.

The problem is now that I’m home, I really don’t want to know where people in Austin or NY or LA are checking in to. It does me no value. It doesn’t do a whole lot more value to even know where people in Phoenix are checking in at because I don’t really care. If I’m out and about with no plans, I’ll probably call or DM someone to hang out with them – not look to see what they’re doing first on 4Square or similar. Besides, most people send that stuff to twitter anyway so I can find them just fine thanks.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but I don’t see the value to the end user in these things. What I do see is a huge data mine for marketers, advertisers and stalkers to glean for information. I also see a great way to suck battery life on my iphone and annoy myself with distractions.

So long location-based check in things. I’ll stick to just telling people where I’m at on Twitter.


  • http://page.ly strebel

    Word.. did my last checkin in AUS as I was boarding and then deleted Gowalla.. may add it back when I travel next to SAFRAN for WordCamp SF. But really dont have a need or care to know what everyone is doing outside of a major conference of event.

  • http://chuckreynolds.us Chuck

    sooo……..
    how am i supposed to stalk you anymore? :)

    Anyways… I still have this desire to use them – If I don’t want to be on the grid I don’t use them and normally won’t bring my phone. I like posting messages tied to my location at times, and it helps to also tell my message based on where I’m at.

    I’m honestly not worried about the privacy thing but for some people I could see an issue; females for instance.

    I’ll continue to use them at my discretion until I see a good reason not to – everything so far is personal decisions along the lines of “don’t need it”.

  • http://ProcrasDonate.com Clay Ward

    My original take on Twitter was just that: great for companies who want to track opinions about their products but not useful for the actual tweeters. Now that I’ve given tweeting a chance for a few weeks now I feel better about the whole thing. I wonder if your initial reaction getting home is in the same vein?

    • http://chrisconrey.com conrey

      Clay, I have been a 4square user since it launched at SXSW last year so this isn’t a new thing for me. But you do bring up a good analogy with early Twitter stuff.

  • http://randomsarah.com Sarah Cooley

    I totally see your point and I understand how people who live in places like Phoenix, Boulder, or even LA might feel the same way.

    But for me, living in NYC, foursquare because just as useful as it is at SXSW. When you don’t have to drive anywhere to meet up with people, the serendipity factor really comes into play.

    And I think that the founders of foursquare especially, might not realize the needs of their users in other cities when they themselves are based in NYC.

    • http://chrisconrey.com conrey

      Sarah – I think that makes sense if you are in a place like NYC where it is user dense and not a driving thing. Most places however aren’t half as dense(people not stupidity) as NYC.

  • http://ricalivestrong.blogspot.com Rica

    Why not just remove those “seasonal” friends from Gowalla & 4Square instead of deleting the application altogether? Let them know “no harm/no foul, but since we’re not in the same city, or someplace we can remotely meet, while it’s very interesting to know, I don’t need an update as regularly now. Let’s friend each other again when we’re in the same place again in the future, though!”

    • http://chrisconrey.com conrey

      Rica – Or I can delete the app and just reinstall it with all of my “seasonal friends” already in place…..

  • http://ricalivestrong.blogspot.com Rica

    You calling NYers dense? I take offense to that… ;)

  • http://chrisconrey.com conrey

    Rica – you caught me mid edit (guilty as charged as a Red Sox fan ;)

  • defrag_ami

    I find value in the tips. Seems like end-users can also make use of the data. As the data set grows, I’d hope to be able to filter by my network.

  • http://stevenhaddox.com Steven

    I completely feel what your saying, but I don’t think it is that big of a deal for the average user to keep it either. It’s completely understandable that it can be a time-suck or distraction, but for me I use it as a complement to Twitter.

    Unless I actually have a tweet relevant to my location and what I’m doing at said location I don’t bother to tweet my check-ins via geo-based apps. However, it is convenient to easily post to twitter with a quick link for more information about the place I’m talking about when it’s relevant, and if it isn’t relevant only the people who have a similar interest in a geo-based application will see my checkins rather than my hundreds of twitter followers that could probably care less.

    Anyway, as you said – it’s an easy uninstall if you don’t want it or need it, but at the same time it can be a very useful (or just plain fun) tool too.

    To each their own :)

  • Mando

    One of the great things about Gowalla is that is lets you disable notifications per-user. So all those folks that don’t live nearby? Turn off their notifications and problem solved :).

    • http://chrisconrey.com conrey

      mando – that sounds like an awful ton of work – deleting was easier

  • mark
  • http://brian.shaler.name Brian

    I’m going to go back to Brightkite-ing pics of interesting nerd meetups and crazy food places like I have been doing (occasionally) for the last 2 years (signed up April 08). You don’t need to be on it, since I’ve told BK to push photos and notes to Twitter & Facebook.

    It seems like it might be handy to have something to notify you if Internet friends enter a certain radius of you. Rather than recording the minutiae of everyone’s errand-running. Turns out that is one of several lesser-known features of BK: http://imgur.com/2n58a.png

    But they don’t have the important features, like badges, items, and mayors! D-:

  • http://chrisconrey.com conrey

    Brian – I did remember that about BK and don’t care about badges/items/mayorships. I’ll admit to not having used BK in a long while but I felt like the same issues existed there (not enough value to be useful unless I use it as a twitter client). I may need to take another look.

  • http://nickhammond.com Nick Hammond

    I’m on the same page with you here, I’ve really cut down my usage to almost nothing. Location based services are really only good for conferences and travel.

    It’s crazy to me how fast everyone switched from being crazy about privacy to publishing it to everyone. Think back to when Facebook first released the news feed, people flipped and started the “I hate Facebook” blah blah groups.

    I tried to delete my gowalla account but they didn’t have a delete button yet at the time haha.

  • http://twitter.com/indiequick indiequick

    Can’t believe that no one has pointed this out. And I completely understand this post, but you missed one of the most valuable built in features to foursquare.

    When you’re in the Phoenix network, you’re only going to get notified if someone is IN the Phoenix network. Just like, probably when you were Austin, you weren’t seeing what your San Francisco friends were doing in California.

    Just saying, you don’t have to delete the service cause you think it overshares, it has the local network built in to prevent such craziness.

    • http://chrisconrey.com conrey

      @indiequick- I know that’s the case – but I still don’t even really care what my local people are doing when they check in somewhere. And Gowalla doesn’t have this feature. The overshares weren’t the only reason I deleted.

  • http://twitter.com/ajleon @ajleon

    Wait, so are your badges for sale now ;)

    I kinda of agree with you, but kinda don’t. The greatest utility of Foursquare is indeed when a large concentration of friends are within close proximity (preferably walking distance). However, it’s still fun even when it’s not that useful. I don’t live on FSq like I do on twitter because FSq is a game, and twitter is useful, but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful at all. I’ve used FSq on trips I’ve taken & it’s been useful (as far as tips and locations people actually like). Maybe not AS useful, but still useful and kinda fun.

    • http://chrisconrey.com conrey

      @ajleon – you mention 4SQ as a game, but is it really a game?

  • http://keithprivette.mp Keith Privette

    Well the one thing you can do through twitter and foursquare\gowalla\brightkite checkins is call and page people from different cities. It happened to me tonight I was paged at a store while picking up ice cream….I checked in and tweeted. Greg from OK called the store had me paged, picked up phone, I knew exactly how he got the number. Little freaky at first then talked and he recommended the Neapolitan Ice Cream…..what do you think?

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