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App Review: Foursquare for Android
Foursquare is a location-based application that's available for Android, iPhone, Palm, and BlackBerry. Many of you are probably already familiar with it or, at least, have seen people showing you their location on your Twitter and Facebook pages. Foursquare serves both a social broadcasting and a business promotion purpose. For those who just want to let their friends in the electronic world know where they are, what they are doing, and how they feel about it, Foursquare is a great application. For businesses, it creates a new medium to spread the word about your products and services, specifically if you have a fixed location.Setup in the Foursquare application is pretty straightforward. When you first open the app, it brings you to a home screen with three tabs: Friends, Places, and Me.
The Friends tab allows you to see where people you have connected with on Foursquare have most recently checked in. By touching any of these friends, you are instantly able to view their info, which includes where they were last seen and various options that they control so that you can communicate directly with them via SMS, email, Twitter, or phone. In my experience with using these contact methods, you are likely to find that many folks aren't even aware that their information is out there on this application for the world to see. That being said, it is up to you to go to your homepage through the Web browser (not the application on your phone) and edit your privacy settings.
The second tab is Places, which uses your phone's GPS to locate venues, created by other users, that are closest to you. At this time, unless you are in a major metropolitan area, you can still come across places that you'll have to add to the Foursquare venue database. You do so by touching Menu while on the Places tab. You will see an icon that says "Add Venue." Touch this icon, and you will be prompted to enter some information about the location that you are adding.
Finally you have the Me tab. This tab shows your check-in history at a glance; it lists the venues that you have become Mayor of, and it shows badges that you have achieved (based on your check-in patterns). Only recently did I achieve the elusive Swarm badge, while attending a Phish concert at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Noblesville, Indiana. Many Social Media Clubs have been attempting to gather fellow Foursquare users in single locations with the idea to unleash the swarm as well.
Foursquare also has an integrated feature that allows you to post your check-in to your Facebook and Twitter pages. I urge you to use this one with caution, though; there are times when you may want to keep your location to yourself. However, there's no denying that we live in an era where people are gladly turning over their location, as well as intimate details about their personal lives, in order to feel more connected to the rest of the world. It's only a matter of time before we see our first Foursquare stalking story in the news.
The most current version of the Foursquare application (as of this writing) was v2010-08-05. In this release, changes included the ability to click on the Me tab and set a new photo for yourself directly from the application. Also, in the previous versions there was no option for viewing other users' photos through the application itself. Your phone's photo viewing program was used instead.A common problem with this application (as well as with other GPS-run apps) is that your phone often has to be in view of the sky to be accurately located on the network. My wife is constantly annoyed by me standing outside of a venue with my phone out, trying to locate the venue on Foursquare so that I can check in. Still, Foursquare is on the verge of breaking out like Twitter did a few years back, so look for your friends' Tweets and Facebook status updates to view their check-ins!
Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsGunderstormAug 31st 2010 3:13PM
You've barely scratched the surface on the problems with this app.
It's not uncommon to launch the app for the first time that day and have it deliver a list of venues that would be accurate an hour ago and 25 miles back. This would be fine if it indicated that it was doing a refresh, but it doesn't (or it isn't). So you have to do a manual refresh.
I've been right outside a business, or worse inside, and the app will not list the business.
It seems to track your favorites. I go to the same Starbucks every morning. You would think that I could fire up the Foursquare app and it would pick up quickly that I go there a lot and display that store, under the favorites heading. It doesn't. Even though I'm mayor.
My biggest recommendation for this app is to not rely on the location function. Launch the app and do a search for the venue you want to check in at. That's the fastest way to check in and not stand around looking like a phone-obsessed idiot waiting for this app to find your location.
BrianAug 31st 2010 5:09PM
This is one of the buggiest apps I've ever seen, and let me premise with the fact that I'm the VP of IT of a software firm, I've written software myself and managed its life cycle from requirements to development to QA to delivery.
In order to make Foursquare work know where you are, I commonly need to log into Google Maps and select "my location". If I leave it up to Foursquare, it commonly won't know where I am. Even if I *do* give it this extra help and it should know exactly where I am, it commonly tells me I'm tens of thousands of meters from venues I'm standing right in front of - and even that I'm the mayor of (meaning, it's not as if I'm looking at the wrong Dunkin Donuts - I've definitely got the right one, Foursquare has my location, and it still thinks I'm too far away). What's funny is, *sometimes* when Foursquare reports that I'm thousands of meters away it will randomly allow me to check in, as if there's a disjunct between what the places/search displays in regards to distance and what the GPS knows to be true. This gets very very frustrating, and hasn't changed in 4 months of using Foursquare.
The only thing that's improved with Foursquare's implementation on Android is the patches to resolve the excessive force close issues, that been much better since roughly June of this year. However, as stated, there's only about a 50/50 chance at best it will actually know where you are and actually allow you to check in.
When you've just about had it with Foursquare's issues, then you'll run into one of four even more annoying messages:
1. Foursquare has timed out (even when I have a perfect signal).
2. Foursquare is over capacity, please try again later.
3. Some random HTML/XML snippet junk that displays as a message.
4. "A surprising error has occurred!"
Foursquare may be hip and gaining traction/users, but if you go to the Android market and actually look at the reviews, most users complain about exactly what I've noted here. They've got some work to do and really need to invest in a more reliable implementation. This is one app I like a lot and continue to use daily, but is infuriating to use due to it's rampant issues.
AmoorySep 6th 2010 1:33AM
Sexy Moto Droid!!! Nice review! Well written and informative!
Check out these cool apps as well!
http://eceplayground.com/2010/08/30/android-monday-metal-detector-wheres-my-droid/