Thursday, August 23, 2018

Location Sharing Foursquare

Location Sharing Foursquare


Cartoon by Phil
 When I landed for the first time in Pune for my further studies, I knew nothing about the town nor the college where it was based. All I had was a four line address. We Indians take pride in the fact that even an one word address can be decoded! Our secret to this confidence relies on the locating skills of  the auto rickshaw drivers and paan shopkeepers. I got into an auto rickshaw and showed him the address. �No worries sir we will find your address with the help of local people/pan walla bhaiyas and bit of my location sense� was his smiling reply. 2 hours, few halts, some round trips and eventually I was standing before my college. The good thing was that I managed to  reach my destination in a new city in India but the bad thing was that it took me 2 hours of roaming in the heat and dust. To add to the ordeal it also created a huge dent in my pocket!

Few years later I tried the same thing in London and it backfired. You don�t have paan shops at each and every corner in London and Londoners prefer to keep a distance from strangers. I had to find my way somehow so I started googling and the first match landed me to Google Maps and I learnt how GPS helps me to locate myself anywhere on this planet. The idea was basic and it caught on brilliantly as all a user had to do, was to type in his to and fro and the route is displayed on his GPS mobile phone/device at once.

Encouraged by this amazing location based technology, I was hungry for more of it. Now I wanted to share my social experience on the go, wherever I was having fun. I wondered what if I could share my Sunday brunch choice at the new highway restaurant with my friends in India. But two guys had wondered the same, way back in 2009. Dennis Crowley who left Google with a great deal of frustration tapped in Naveen Selavdurai; who then collaborated their ideas to frame a location based sharing site. Today the world knows it as Foursquare. 

It is a fantastic idea wherein people share their experiences and emotions at the location checked in by them. Dennis and Naveen didnt stop at mere check ins and pings; they went one step ahead by associating the social experience with a bit of gaming. Users were lured to make different types of check ins and collect badges in return. The idea was simple - connect and engage users on a device on which 60% of the world is hooked up night and day. Foursquare then took the social experience from laptops to mobile phones and is now being checked in by more than 3 million users worldwide.

Foursquare can also help you to make new friends. @jqn, an European expat who had recently landed in Pune is already travelling comfortably on his 2 wheeler even though he stayed barely a month in Pune. This is the magic of Foursquare. All @jqn does is locates himself and Foursquare lists down all the nearby places. @jqn then checks in to one of the place, reads the comments left by fellow Foursquarians who had visited earlier and then makes his choice. I became his Foursquare friend in one such checked in point- Cafe Goodluck .

Ah! My Foursquare Android app has just updated me that @jqn is having a �methi paratha� in @Kuku da Paratha!

Dont forget to share your exciting Foursquare stories with us and keep checking in.


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