This may come as a surprise to some, but I’ve always been one of those folks who is last to adopt the latest technology. About two weeks ago, I finally established a presence on Facebook. This past weekend I finally joined Twitter. On this website you can see where I have an area on the side bar where if someone was so inclined they could follow my “twittering.”
So as you can imagine, I thought that I was pretty well caught up in terms of technology and as the expression goes: protecting and projecting my brand. But alas, Pete Cashmore, CEO of Mashable has informed me via CNN that once again I am now behind the times. According to Cashmore the next big technology hit, at least relative to social networking, is going to be Foursquare. While Twitter insists upon asking you to answer the question: what are you doing? Foursquare wants to know: where are you at?
I will probably regret saying this, but in this case I think Mr. Cashmore is very wrong. Foursquare will develop its own social networking clan, I’m sure, but its premise is so different from the other social networks that I personally think this will lead to failure. Through the use of Twitter, Livejournal or Facebook, a user can interact with friends and acquaintances across the country or across the world. Foursquare, I believe, has more local applications. For example, I could announce on Foursquare that I am in the IHOP near Oceanside Boulevard and Interstate 5. Now my friends in Chicago or Baltimore or New York might find that news interesting, but I seriously doubt any of them would really care or think to travel across country to join me. However, my friends who live near Oceanside, California might be very interested in this bit of information and may even want to to meet me there for coffee. That to me would be the strength of Foursquare – physically putting people together.
But who knows, a year from now I will probably be here lamenting how I wish I had joined Foursquare a year ago so that I could be the Mayor of that IHOP. Or I could be secretly smiling that once again I managed to avoid the “bleeding” edge of technology.