Interesting project by Foursquare, showcasing the last three months of checkins, using their big data to create a mashup on top of a Mapbox map.
Of the SoLoMo team, Location hasn’t really gone mainstream unlike Social and Mobile. Privacy concerns not withstanding, when you get aggregate data like this, i start to wonder if we could use this location data for urban planning. Of course brands are only interested on traffic and consumption patterns, but there’s still a lot to explore once we get to learn on how to live in public and share our data for good purposes.
Facebook Places launched last week, exploring their big chunk of mobile users, while establishing a weird sort of coo-petition with location startups GoWalla and Foursquare.
In a worrisome pattern for Facebook the usual backlash followed, again regarding privacy concerns. This time they got it half-right, by sharing location check-ins only to friends (and not everyone), but the big concern seems to be about the tagging. Facebook Places lets your tag you by default, but doesn’t offer any opt-in. Why is this troublesome? Let me give you an example:
- You go out with a few friends for a boys night out
- Your girlfriend stays at home, finishing some late report
- One of your friends checks-in at the restaurant. Your girlfriend likes the status on Facebook.
- After a few drinks at the bar/restaurant, one of your friends decides to check-in at the strip bar next door, even if you’re all heading home.
Well, good luck giving a reasonable explanation to your girlfriend. Even if you can remove the tag later, the harm is done.
Yes, i know they could do the same on Twitter, but there’s a big difference: On Facebook, your status becomes instantly visible, while on Twitter one has to perform a direct search, which requires a lot more effort (aka stalking). Furthermore, you might not be pleased at all to know there’s no full opt-out feature from Places.
