Thing #44: Foursquare

Between Thing #42 causing one participant to comment on my broadcasting of my location on Twitter, and Thing #43 where Emily introduced us to hyper-local information, talking about Foursquare, just seemed like a natural follow-up.

By way of introduction here’s a quick video about how Foursquare works:
How To Unlock Your World With Foursquare on Howcast

Even if you don’t have a cell phone or just find the idea of letting the whole Internet know where you are creepy, don’t worry, there are still some things you can do with Foursquare, especially when it comes to the library.

Let’s take a look at the major features of Foursquare.

Locations

Every location in Foursquare has its own page. For example the page for the Bennett Martin Public Library here in Lincoln lists its address and phone number, gives a map of its location, tells me how many times I’ve checked in there, along with the total number of check-ins from all Foursquare users. You can also read the tips for the location and leave a tip yourself. (Assuming you’re logged in.) If the place has a mayor, that person is also listed.

If there are any specials for a particular location they will also be listed on this page.

Badges

As you check in at different locations you eventually start earning badges. The number of available badges is huge. The first badge people usually earn is the Adventurer badge for checking in at ten different locations.

Some badges are location-type specific as in the Barista badge for checking in at multiple coffee shops. Others, like the I Voted 2010 badge was earned for checking in at a polling place on Election day 2010. Others such as the Overshare badge are more humorous. You earn this one by checking in at more than 10 locations in a 12 hour period.

The badges themselves don’t actually mean all that much. They’re there more to turn Foursquare into a bit of a game just to make it a little more interesting.

Friends

As with most online social services today, Foursquare gives you the ability to have friends in the system. Connecting with other users give you the ability to be automatically notified as to where they are.

Obviously your mileage will vary when it comes to tracking your friends in Foursquare. Most of my friends don’t live anywhere near me so I only take advantage of this feature when we’re all in the same general vicinity such as a conference.

However, this past Christmas I was back home in Rochester, NY and checking in at various locations. One morning I checked in at a local coffee shop and shortly thereafter got a text message from someone I usually only see at conferences, but lives in Rochester, asking me what I was doing in town. If it wasn’t for Foursquare I may have totally forgotten and not reconnected with them on my trip.

Mayors

“A mayor in foursquare is the user with the most number of days with check-ins at a specific place within the past 60 days. Only one check-in per day counts towards your mayorship tally.”

This is the other game-like aspect to Foursquare. Typically being a location’s mayor earns you nothing more than bragging rights. However silly this might seem, I have found myself recently being a little upset when I lost the mayorship to my favorite sushi bar in Lincoln though I’m not really sure I can explain why.

By the way, “Only users with a photo uploaded to their account (no faceless mayors!) will be eligible, so you should upload a photo from your settings page.”

But sometimes, there are specials that a business will offer only to a mayor.

FYI: It is against Foursquare’s terms of service for employees of a business to be the mayor since employees have an unfair advantage of being there more often than customers. Once you claim a location, you can identify Foursquare accounts of employees which will prevent them from becoming mayor. (This is why I’m no longer the mayor of the Library Commission.)

Specials

As more and more people use Foursquare, businesses start to notice. As they notice more businesses start to offer specials for mayors or just for folks who check in. Here’s two examples.

This past summer, Starbucks offered a discount on frappuccinos to all the Starbucks mayors. At the time I was the mayor of the Starbucks down the street from the office so I was able to get the discounted refreshment.

Just this afternoon when I stopped into my local Qdoba restaurant to pick up some lunch I checked in and was told that I could earn a free chips & queso after checking in three times. I’m not sure this particular deal will get me to go there more often but it doesn’t hurt.

Here’s where the mobile-centric concept of Foursquare works for advertisers. When I open up the Foursquare app on my Droid it figures out where I am via GPS and then tells me what’s around me. If I see a “special offer” flag on a location, I’m much more likely to check out what the special is. If it’s good enough, that might actually make me patronize that business.

Claiming a location

Even if you’re not willing to play Foursquare, there’s something you should do for the library: make sure you’re listed and claim the location.

Making sure you’re listed is simple, do a search within Foursquare. If you find your library, you can scratch that off the list. (If your library is listed more than once, or contains incorrect information, we’ll deal with that shortly.)

If you library isn’t already listed you can add it via the add a venue page. Fill in all the appropriate information and submit it. Your library should be listed in the system nearly immediately.

(If you’re using a mobile app, and you want to check in somewhere that isn’t already in the system you can add the venue via the app. I don’t believe you can add a venue via text messaging.)

Once your library is listed, you can then claim that location. Claiming a location gives you the ability to do several things to your listing:

• Edit the venue details should they include wrong information.
• Create specials for your venue.
• Mark specific Foursquare users as employees so they can’t become the mayor.

The process of claiming a venue isn’t that difficult. First bring up the venue’s page and find the “Do you manage this venue? Claim here” banner. Click that link and follow the directions. (Basically, you give them the venue’s phone number and you’ll be called back with a recording that will give you a special code which you’ll need to enter into Foursquare.)

As you can guess this is just a brief introduction to the major features of Foursquare. Please take some time to look around the site and see what else you can find. (Hint: to-do lists)

Assignment:

Sign up for a Foursquare account and add me as a friend. Look up your library and see if it’s already in the system. If not, add it as a location. If it has not already been claimed, claim your library. Add a special if you’d like. (You may need to work with your library’s administration to make sure it’s ok that you’re taking this responsibility.)

If you have a cell phone, install the correct foursquare app for your phone (smartphones) or figure out how to check in via text message. Over a period of a few days, access Foursquare on your phone and see if there’s any information about where you are. Whether you check in or not is up to you.

Blog about your experience with Foursquare and/or your thoughts about the whole concept of geo-location services. Here are some questions to get you started:

• Does this whole thing freak you out or is it fun?
• Was your library already in the system? Did it have a mayor?
• Were other locations you regularly go to already in the system?
• Given the size of your town were you surprised, or not, about the number of local locations already in the system?

Thing #43: Libraries and Hyperlocal Information

While one of the great things about the Web is its ability to connect people across great distances, it is also useful for bringing together people in the same local community. The recent trend of hyperlocal (meaning extremely local, or relating to a very specific location) journalism highlights the fact that people want to be able to go online and find information about their own community. As this article explains, in a time when some newspapers are in decline, hyperlocal web sites have emerged as a new way for people to receive news and information.

Hyperlocal sites take a few different approaches. Some sites hire authors and editors to generate content, which they may supplement with feeds from local news sources. Others rely entirely on aggregated news from other sources. Some choose to focus on a few locations, while others aggregate content for almost any location and allow users to search for a location that interests them.

What does this mean for libraries? This blog post by Emily Clasper, a librarian in New York, outlines some of the reasons she believes hyperlocal news should be important to libraries. As she points out, libraries are a traditional source of information about a community. These web sites could be competition for libraries, but they could also be an opportunity.
Here are some more details about particular hyperlocal news sites:

Patch
On Patch’s home page, you can see that the states that it serves are still quite limited. Patch hires writers and editors to create content relevant to each local community. In addition to reading news stories, visitors to the site can find local events, browse a directory of local businesses, and ask questions about local topics in the Q & A section (users must create an account to use this section.)

EveryBlock
EveryBlock is similar to Patch in that it only focuses on certain locations. EveryBlock focuses on larger cities, and then allows users to find information by searching by zip code, neighborhood, or street. You can even narrow your search down to a particular block - this site truly illustrates the meaning of hyperlocal! The information on EveryBlock is aggregated from a number of sources. In contrast to Patch, which focuses mostly on news stories, EveryBlock provides information like crime reports, real estate listings, and restaurant reviews, all provided by outside sources.

Outside.in
Outside.in does not create original content, but aggregates news stories from local sources. You can search for a particular city and find the latest headlines. The variety of content is not as great as that found on Patch or EveryBlock, but it does have the advantage of providing a place to find content about many different communities, rather than a select few. Each state has a page with links to various cities, which makes it convenient to find Nebraska headlines, for example.

Placeblogger
Placeblogger is a little different from the sites listed above. Instead of hiring authors to write content, or aggregating news feeds, Placeblogger focuses on compiling information from blogs about a particular location. Content is collected by users adding blogs to the site, so it is only as good as the blogs provided. Not all cities have a lot of content. (For example, Omaha has one blog listed, and Lincoln has five. However, Chicago has quite a few.) Placeblogger also has a social networking aspect. Users are encouraged to create profiles and track the places they’ve lived and visited.

Assignment:

1. Read the article and blog post mentioned above.

2. Explore at least two of the hyperlocal sites from the list above. (They don’t all have Nebraska information, but you should still be able to pick a community and get an idea of the types of information provided.)

3. Write a blog post recounting your experience with the sites. Do they have any features that particularly interested you? Do you think these sites serve a useful purpose? If you lived in a community served by these sites, would you use any of them as sources of information?

What is your opinion on libraries and hyperlocal information? Should libraries partner with hyperlocal services? In communities without a Patch or EveryBlock web site, should libraries fill this role and promote hyperlocal information on their web sites? (Or are they already doing so?)

Thing #42: Pimp Your Twitter

Twitter was Thing #13 in our previous Nebraska Learns 2.0 program, back in November 2008.  It's been a couple of years, and Twitter has evolved since then, so we figured it might be a good time to revisit Twitter.

Some of you may have never used Twitter before, some of you did the original Thing for Twitter, and some of you may be using Twitter on a regular basis. No problem! We have options for all levels of Twitter users.

So, for this month's Thing, you have 3 choices. You can do the Beginner activity, the More Than a Beginner activity, or you can do both!

First, for those of you totally new to Twitter, watch this short video to learn how to get started:



Twitter allows users to post 140 character updates, answering the question: “What's happening?”. These posts are shared via the web to either the world or to the users’ friends.

Users can access Twitter messages - called tweets - on the Web, thru an RSS feed, via text on their cell phones or with any number of third part apps. Accessing a Twitter account, one might find an update on a users' day, a direct message to another Twitter user, a link to something the user wants to share with their friends, or a bit of wit and wisdom.

Libraries are using Twitter as well as a means to update content on the Web or for alert services.

Check out some of these articles to learn more about how you can use Twitter, both personally and for your library:

How to Use Twitter

Twitter for Beginners: 5 Steps for Better Tweeting

How to Twitter - Wall Street Journal

Twitter for Libraries (and Librarians)

How Your Library May Not Be Using Twitter But Should

Beginner Assignment:

1. Visit Twitter and sign up for a free account. Try a few tweets.

See how other libraries are using Twitter:

Libraries Using Twitter - from Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki

Follow one of us - Allana, Christa, Michael, or Susan.

Or follow one of the Nebraska Library Commission's Twitter accounts: NLC News, NLC Tech, or NLC Reference.

2. Search Twitter for mentions of your library, school or anything that interests you to explore how people use this tool. What conversations did you find?

3. Blog about the experience. Did you like micro-blogging? How could libraries use Twitter? How could you use Twitter?
 
There are Many Apps for Twitter

The Twitter web page is where you start using Twitter. But as you use it more, you may discover that the web page is a bit lacking. Maybe there are some features you wish it had. Did you know that you can post pictures via Twitter? And that you can track your account statistics? What if, like we do at the Library Commission, you have multiple Twitter accounts to update? There are services that can do all of these things, and more.

To help users interact with their Twitter account(s), many third party apps and web sites have cropped up. Take a look at these articles about sites and applications that can make Twitter more useful to you and your library:

Top 20 Sites to Improve Your Twitter Experience

5 Terrific Twitter Research Tools

11 Free Services for Scheduling Social Media Updates

25 Twitter Apps to Manage Multiple Accounts

More Than a Beginner Assignment:

1. Try out 1 or 2 of the sites or apps listed in the articles above.

2. Share your impressions of the sites or apps you tested. Write a blog post about what you thought was good or bad about the apps. Did you find them useful? Would you have liked them to do something more or less? Do you think you'll continue using them? How could libraries use them?