May 25, 2010

Foursquare a new social networking tool

By: Casey Knox

Foursquare is a newer social networking tool.  The premise is you “check in” to locations letting all your friends know where you are.  Incentives like becoming the mayor of a location, make it seem like a contest to keep checking into a certain place to become the “winner”.  Other incentives for “checking in” are discounts and special offers, all the while letting all your friends know just where you are.

While I agree the idea of going out on the town instead of staying in and chatting to our friends on facebook is a better option. I can also see how appealing it may seem to have a bunch of friends check in to  local bar and BAM you know what tonight’s plans are, but do we really want everyone knowing exactly where we are all the time. I remember when you could go out disconnect from the world and get lost. There were no cell phones. If you absolutely had to get a hold of someone while you were out you used a payphone. These days anyone can get a hold of you anytime and this just makes it all extremely intrusive. 

And speaking of intrusive.  When did it become cool to let everyone know EVERYTHING.  Didn’t it used to be a bad thing safety wise to advertise what you were doing, where you were doing it and who you were with along with every little detail of your private life.

My cousin 18 years old shouts out on facebook  “Im going to be at blah blah park tomorrow afternoon taking pictures come hang out with me”.  Really? An 18 year old girl alone in a park taking pictures… I gotta tell you I was nervous for her. Am I old fashioned to think that that’s being pretty careless. I mean come on no one is truly friends with ALL their friends on these social networking sites.  In fact if you go to www.facebook.com/KIN you can see a sort of social experiment where a girl travels around the country to meet some of her facebook “friends”. Of course the real goal of this site is to sell a phone that will help make social networking even easier.

And what about the whole Big Brother situation we all seem to have forgotten about. I remember thinking when I saw 1984, how did it even get that far. Well here we are and I am watching as the whole world and younger generation drink the Koolaid and its all so “hip” to the kids it seems unstoppable. – I’m just sayin'.