Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Foursquare says "You are boring."

"This is your 111th check-in at Insight Media. You are still mayor"

Thats the message I got this morning as I walked into the office and checked into Insight Media on foursquare.

Having used Foursquare for the past 5 months, I've learned one very important fact about myself.

I'm horribly boring.

For those of you who don't know, Foursquare is a location based service you use on your phone to "Check-in" every time you visit specific sites and places in the city. For the places you visit more than any other user, you become "the Mayor."

Back when I first joined, Louisville had just been added to the service and there was very few of us even using it.

Well thanks to some tweaks to their service and a very successful presence at this year's SXSW festival in Austin TX, Foursquare has quietly began to enter the mainstream media world.

Now getting back to my situation.

If you never do anything fun or exciting, foursquare simply reminds you of this every day.

Anyone who follows me on Foursquare knows this to be true. I check in at Insight Media and Home Depot. Both of the places I work at. And that is pretty much it.

If it is a particularly action packed day, you may catch me checking into my local grocery store to pick up a taco kit for dinner.

I'm such a dork, one of the main reasons I'm looking forward to my Indianapolis 500 trip in May is it will give me an awesome location to check-in at.

I want to be one of these people in the middle of New York City, always checking in with dozens of other people at various bars and hotspots.

But unfortunately Louisville still has a long way to go before Foursquare is that popular.

However I will say it is growing.

When I checked into Home Depot the other night, somebody else was checked in with me!

I'm going to keep using Foursquare because I think it's fun even if it is a little too self-absorbed.

As far as showcasing how boring I am, maybe Foursquare will force me to get out and do some new random activities, which wouldn't be a bad thing.