Foursquare is a somewhat popular mobile based application that allows you to “check-in” to locations and provides information about where you are to your friends (or to your larger social networks if you choose) and depending on how often you check-in at any one particular location you can earn points and even real-life rewards from certain businesses.

Right now businesses are taking advantage of this information as a way of luring new customers and rewarding loyal customers. One Facebook friend posted:

Attentive businesses will use this information to their advantage in this way. I think that’s great. There is a problem though – many people are very leery of using a location based application that gives away their position so freely. In fact one enterprising organization – Please Rob Me - is using its cynicism about location based tech to invite would be criminals to watch for when you are away from home.

So what would I look for in a next generation of something like Foursquare? Well, why not put the ownness on businesses to accurately map their location using GPS co-ordinates. By doing this you, as an individual, could sign up for this type of service and just by having your phone enabled the application could pick up on what business you were patronizing. By using an anonymous id businesses could instead push rewards to you instead of waiting for you to announce yourself. Keeping with the anonymous id the application could inform other users of how many people are currently at any given location. This doesn’t mean you would have to make everyone anonymous; like how the applications work now you could allow people to share more of their personal location information if they choose too. The key however is that the anonymity option would still allow businesses and users to connect without a direct, transparent relationship.

I believe these tweaks would greatly open up the use of location based applications to a broader user base. What do you think?

My contribution to Social Knowledge: Using Social Media to Know What You Know is moving forward in the process. I’m hoping to have a chance to update you all as to the publish date when that becomes available.

Join me on Saturday, February 20, 2010 for a great free conference at the Ohio State University – Digital Media in a Social World (the whole conference is both Friday and Saturday):

Andrew Miller
Bridging the Gap Between Traditional Offline Engagement and Online Social Networking
Does your organization have a split personality? Is your audience getting mixed messages between how you interact online versus offline? Learn how bridging the gap between your traditional audience engagement and your online social networking efforts will provide a stronger foundation of supporters and greater innovation.

I’ve talked in the past about how online digital media provides everyone with the opportunity to promote themselves and their passion in a way that we could never have imagined before the existance of the internet. This concept brings forward a lot of questions however. Consider this video (give it a watch before finishing up the article).

Espresso, Intelligentsia from Department of the 4th Dimension on Vimeo.

The video is really two stories and two opportunities. Depending on your interest you will surely pick out one of the two as being the obvious one, but they are both equally on the nose in my opinion.

The skill of the filmaker is in full view in this piece. Clean editing, good use of color splashed in with the black and white and a crisp message. The film’s star is clear and concise and there are no wasted words nor frames in this short film.

How about the subject of the film, both the idea of how to make the perfect espresso as well as the showcasing of such a knowledgeble barista? Given the opportunity to purchase an espresso from this barista versus another why wouldn’t you choose him? His attention to detail is amazing.

Look around in your daily life and find those people who take their job, something that might generally seem mundane, and elevate it to an art form. This pride in every detail is really something special – it is exactly what makes them stand out.

Consider how you might find something that is comfortable, a career path or otherwise, and turn it into your celebrated art. Then, think about how you might let the rest of the world in to celebrate with you. Are you ready to open those doors?