CHAPTER 19: Finding Your Way With Maps
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Foursquare
Foursquare was cofounded by ex-Googler Dennis Crowley, who worked on a similar
project, Dodgeball, which was purchased and abandoned by Google. However,
Foursquare takes the social network to a new and different level by adding a gaming
component. Dennis Crowley explained it as a method to combine exploring your city
with gaming and a little bit of Boy Scout pride in earning merit badges and trophies.
Certain combinations of check-ins in Foursquare earn badges. Some examples include
checking into the same location three times, finding five karaoke bars, finding three
places in Chicago with photo booths, or checking in after 3 a.m. on a school night.
Checking into the same location regularly could also
earn you a “mayorship.” The picture to the right
shows a check in that resulted in winning a new
mayorship. The mayor of a location is the person
who has checked in most frequently in the last two
months, so you need to keep checking in to maintain
the title.
However, rapid checking in is disabled to prevent too
many people from gaming the system.
Gowalla
While Foursquare is a bit of a competitive game, Gowalla is more of a personal
exploration and virtual geocaching tool. You can earn pins, similar to the badges in
Foursquare, and you maintain a passport of places you’ve visited. You can also create
and travel on tours of different check-in locations.
Rapid check-ins are fine with Gowalla, since there’s no mayorship. It’s also much more
sensitive to proximity than Foursquare, so you need to be pretty close to a location to
Gowalla also gives users a few virtual items they can
leave or exchange at locations. Examples would be
blankets, avocados, and espresso machines. To the
right, you can see the luggage tags left at a location.
When you encounter a virtual item at a location, you
can see the history of who owned the item,
encouraging the frequent exchange of these virtual
geocaches.
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