Brandthony

When you walk into a Starbucks, what’s the first thing you think about? Is it checking in? For me, that comes in about 8th place after things like “I hope the barista is cute,” “Should I get coffee cake?” “Hmm, iced or hot coffee?” and “Is the bathroom vacant?” The list goes on and on.

I’m 23 years old and I’ve worked primarily on digital and social media marketing campaigns. Because of this, when I’m roped in on projects I’m usually asked what platforms could be tapped to make a campaign go viral. One of the tools mentioned most often these days is FourSquare, but I swear, I almost never want to suggest it.

To me, FourSquare falls squarely in the category of oversharing. I don’t use FourSquare because I simply forget that I have an account. The other day I was at a really cool event at the Zeppellin Hall Biergarten in Jersey City and after about 4 hours of being there I thought, “This is the kind of thing FourSquare is made for, right?” But then I thought, “But, I still don’t want to check-in.”

I reluctantly did and browsed the people who were also checked-in. It was cool to see that there were other people there, but I didn’t know any of them and could care less. So I checked-in, earned points, and essentially explored every feature on FourSquare…and promptly forgot about it.

Most people like to check-in for the social game within FourSquare. Hell, it can be cool since a lot of places are giving away free gifts to frequent visitors and mayors. For some reason though, that has never interested me and it’s only now that I realize why. I simply feel like I’m whoring myself to these establishments because by checking in I’m almost selling my presence to these companies.

Maybe I’m missing out on the FourSquare boat by tossing it to the side. But honestly, if I wanted to share where I was, I’d make it a tweet or a Facebook status.