• Does anyone care if I was in a swarm, visited Mount Rushmore or can administer CPR?
• Do we have to get jackets or sashes that we attach these digital badges to?
• Do you visit the pages of your friends to see what badges they have, or do you use some client just to see where they check in and have no clue what they earned?
• Can I get free services, coupons or discounts for having specific badges?  This isn’t mayorship, just an icon.

I begin to feel we reached a peak in the desire to achieve such things and are looking for true value in the services we are using.  Badges inherently were built for kids as a sign of learning and have now turned into a game with no winner.  Each time you get close to having all of the possible badges, new ones are announced.  The game never ends.

It becomes like a RPG that adds levels every time someone conquers all there is.  I have a badge for all of the sites giving out badges.  But it wouldn’t be appropriate.

After you create an account, it prompts you to allow them to authorize them using the Foursquare API and read your stream of checkins.  From there, it will tell you how many checkins you have at a location, who the mayor is and how many more you should need to steal the title.

You can even search for a particular site if you have your eyes on being mayor there or if they are running an upcoming special.  All thanks to When Will I Be Mayor.  It was interesting to see how far behind I was in certain spots and how far ahead in others.  So using it in reverse let’s you know who is creeping up behind you as well.

I have written recently about how Foursquare has failed me, and this does not detract or add to that.  It is just a good implementation of the API to show how mayorships works inside the game known as Foursquare.

There is no quality control in making, duplicating and creating locations.  This is derived from individuals not wasting the time to correctly search and match a location, to network failures that don’t show results with prompts to create even more.  Seriously, do you really, really think no one has even been to that airport and checked in?  No one?

Then we move into the micro-location placements.  I read an article where Denny, of Foursquare, was paraphrased in saying that it is part of the fun when referring to creating these new micro-locations.

A micro-location (by my new definition) is small places within large check in points.  For example gates at an airport.  I can buy in the to the idea of doing that after you check into the airport itself due to the airport size and letting people know exactly where you sit.  However, which of the 5 airport listings did you get back in your result and how many variations of the gate are there now?  Shouldn’t “gate A7 at Stl” be matched and forced somehow into a single listing of “STL – gate A7″ and the other “A7 gate at Lambert” and maybe “Lambert gate A7″.  Oh the list goes on.  So much more.

A location service basing monetization needs controls of the data itself before moving ahead.  How can you guarantee people are using the one where you offer the free drinks or discounts?  What if two exist?  Who won?  How do I advertise?  How do I track results?

This adds to the overall complexity in the sheer number of location services fighting to be on top.  Or to get purchased and sucked into some major network.  I still use the service, for no other reason that people look there to find people.  However, I am losing value in the visits myself as the user base grows.  Even being a Level 1 Super User has me spending far too much time cleaning up others mistakes to simplify my later check-in experience.

The point made was that while they like the history of where they visited and even the game of being “mayor”, the idea of someone knowing exactly where you are was disturbing.  Knowing where they were was just fine.  It still provided the level of sharing locations while adding a level of pseudo security by placing a time delay in someone seeing the check-in and walking out the door.

I contemplated over the weekend just how this affects not only the usage of the services (Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Latitude, Loopt and whatever), but the privacy concerns that aren’t addressed.

In usage, the goal of the services is to show where to are to presumably draw a crowd, establish a pattern in your visits and take some virtual ownership of that place.  While Foursquare seems to be taking advantage of this by getting restaurants on board to give freebies or discounts away to mayors and the others provide notes and pictures to be loaded in, the real value relies in knowing your habits, travels and preferences.

The jumps right into privacy.  I thought about spitting this to SocialStalking, but the reaches are much farther.  How easy do we make ourselves a target in both the real location where we are and noting when we are not at our place of residence?  Is there any legitimate fear in allowing people to know our location down to the few feet via GPS coordinates?

The race of early social network adopters was to enable sharing to as many friends as possible until we realized just how much data we were sharing to seemingly virtual friends.  While many choose to check-in manually, many still turn on full automation through their phone GPS.  I prefer to manually check-in to only create a history of visited places or to mark a specific restaurant I may not want to forget.

How do you handle the check in process?  Do you do it when you arrive or when you walk out?

- A client, other than the mobile web, for mobile devices and smartphones.  The iPhone is the place they will start.  The BlackBerry and Android should be soon to follow.  With the native client I can interact faster, add far more integration into the device itself and provide an experience based on the device, not the website.

- Enable site tagging from the mobile interface.  See above first in making a proper client.  I already have fields for name, address, cross street, phone numbers and even Twitter accounts for the location.  How about one for tagging?  Having this only available via the web leaves most places with no definition.  You have search enabled for tagging, but not entering.  No wonder there are so many empty.

- Allow me to find my friends in any city as a toggle.  Just because I am not in NYC that instant doesn’t mean I am not headed there or want to locate someone.  The mobile web only shows me the local people.  A great choice for default, but expand it, allowing me to see everyone in my network when needed.

- Open more of the great stats found online to the mobile device.  A native client would make this simpler but just adding this would add some interest.  Even when exploring other people.  How active are they, where do they go most.  (Almost moves toward stalking, but they have to approve you first anyway)

- Speed the process of creating new badges.  I liked the idea of being able to outline and submit ideas for new badges. It was hard to find, and many I asked didn’t know you could do it.  But a great way for businesses to have their own.  Think of sports teams making a badge for those that check in at their venue a specific number of times.  A great incentive that could have awards behind it.  The same stands true for restaurants as well.

As I add more friends and am able to see how they interact, I still wonder where the revenue model is unless ads are a short time coming.  I am not talking intrusive ads, but ones where a sponsor is able to place an ad around where you check in, meaning you have an interest in that already.  Not just wildly placed ones that had no bearing on my likes and past visits.  Yes, this is how FourSquare also acts being able to create a pseudo history of places you go and how they are tagged.  All learned behavior.  Look out for something like the Facebook Credit Card coming along base on those same premises.

As you can see you earn badges for each city independently.  The first being the newbie and first check in.  To promote the usage of Foursquare more, it would be nice to have a widget for badges or at least Mayorship of every location you have to place on your blog if you intend in using this over other location services.

Mayorship becomes more important for public places showing a location you may often be found as well as a promotional item.  While this breaks a lot of SocialStalking rules, Foursquare is a game and should be treated as such.

Another addition would be the ability to at least show my feed of locations as I check in on the side of my blog or page.  Currently that is only found on the profile page for yourself and friends.

I think what I am driving at as I rambled at the beginning is that while Foursquare is fun, the manual check-in (non GPS enabled) process and lack of integration with publishing to other social sites (outside of a tweet you can enable which many people hate seeing), makes using the site on a constant basis a struggle.

What I did appreciate is how badges are assigned and how you can suggest your own.  For example, visit a certain number of venues tagged with gym in a month and get the Gym Rat badge.  As a user you can also suggest badges for specific things and what the badge itself should look like.

Overall I like the idea of Foursquare and I know they are working on expanding as they even add more mobile client capabilities (BlackBerry would be nice, hint).  So I will keep an open eye on their growth.  Plus to make sure no one steals my Mayorships.

Let me explain further.  A restaurant sees, sometimes accidentally, that people are checking in (via FourSquare or Brightkite or whatever) to their restaurant.  This then shows to their friends and followers where they are and a place they eat often.  Most restaurants get business from word of mouth, not just random stopping by.  So to have those people continue to patronize the location, they offer coupons for that day via Twitter (see my posting from March 09).

Then along comes services like FourSquare that take location awareness to a game level.  By checking into a place often enough, you can become the mayor of the location.  No matter what it is.  Wayne Sutton became mayor of his hotel room in Vegas at BlogWorldExpo humorously.  So the restaurant rethinks some of the strategy and gives free drinks (or maybe a small dessert or salad, whatever) to the current mayor of the location.  The person is there spending enough money and announcing where they eat, so this becomes a frequent visitor/diner card without the card.

How do you, the user, capitalize?  Look for places that have offerings that you frequently visit.  Point out to the owners of some of these local delis, cafes and more about the ability to maximize patronage without extra advertising budget.  Look at what Rizzo Tees in St Louis does via Twitter to drive traffic.  Chris does an amazing job with offers, coupons and specials and has a large following.

Forgot the crazy thought about having a coupon show up as you walk by a place, most of us already have a destination in mind and there is so much more integration to be done there first with GPS.  This side lets the customer be the word of mouth.