A little bit of Foursquare history was made in London last night. The UK’s first “super swarm” badge was awarded to more than 300 users of the location game. They all checked into the Jewel Bar in Piccadilly, with no other goal than to win the badge.
Foursquare has been one of the year’s fastest-growing social networking services. Its mobile-phone app lets you “check in”, letting your friends know where you are but also earning digital rewards for your profile.
The person who’s checked in most at any location becomes its “mayor”. “Badges” are given to people whose check-ins reveal them to be cinephiles, frequent flyers or art lovers – but they’re also awarded for one-off events such as last night’s flashmob-style gathering.
While the super swarm badge is among the hardest to win, the significance of last night’s event is somewhat debatable. There is very little, physically, to show for this achievement. But as social gaming takes off, game mechanics – the idea of giving out tiny rewards to encourage certain behaviour – are very much in vogue, with several start-ups and marketing campaigns incorporating check-ins and badges.
I went along and asked London’s biggest Foursquare enthusiasts why they thought it was worth checking in.
David, an organiser of the super swarm
Why do you want this badge so much?
It’s a badge for the best social networking in the world! I wanted to come and be part of the UK’s first super swarm. I thought that would be a pretty cool thing to have.
Why is it cool?
Because it’s cool! Can you define cool?
Does this badge improve your social standing?
It probably decreases it with all non-Foursquarers. But if I meet another Foursquarer, then yeah, I’ve got a lot of status. If I meet someone on the street and say ‘Yeah, I just met 250 geeks on their iPhones’, I don’t think that would come across as well. But who cares?
Kenny
Why have you come to get the badge?
I genuinely thought it’s the nerdiest possible thing I could ever do today. It doesn’t get worse than this. I thought in some way it might be ironic, and I might meet a girl here who was as nerdy as me.
Kate
What’s the appeal of a digital badge?
Because you look online at other people, and you see they’re not really using it, or they are not really trying. It is status to have a badge, to have a hard badge to achieve.
Phil
Why do you use Foursquare?
The different badges make it a little bit addictive and geeky. I run a business, a pub restaurant, so we are trying to use Foursquare to develop our business. For a long, long time we didn’t see a benefit to it from a business perspective. We’re still not there yet, but we have already dropped into all the other social networking avenues, and they are very very useful. You don’t want to miss the boat.
Ant
What’s the appeal?
I have OCD. It gives me something to do. At least I’m not at home playing Halo. But it syncs back to my work email, so if I’m out, people in the office can see where I am. So it’s not always wise or prudent to check in at all the places.
Why not just use Facebook Places instead?
I don’t want my Facebook friends knowing where I am all the time. I have 612 friends on Facebook, I’ve got five on Foursquare. There is a big drop off. I don’t want my mum to know exactly where I am at 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.
Mark
What do you like about Foursquare?
You can get tips on places to go, which is quite handy. Obviously it’s not what you read in newspapers – it’s actually real people’s reviews, as such. Sometimes you get very biased views when you read the paper. [On Foursquare] you have hundreds of people giving you a genuine impression and you get an overall good feel for the place.
Chris Pearson, who came up with the idea for the super swarm
Why does the badge matter?
It doesn’t matter, in the whole scheme of things. But actually it matters to me because I didn’t know anyone in this community – the whole thing was built from 10 people I’d never met before.
I like the idea of every one [check-in] to create a badge counts. The man who checks in at 250 couldn’t have done it without me, because I checked in first. It’s an uber vote.
Joe
Do you see great value in having won the super swarm badge?
Not really… Maybe you’re worried you’d be left out. And there is a tiny, slim possibility that something might happen… [Foursquare CEO] Dennis Crowley might come through the ceiling and give us all iPads or something.
At the Future of Web Apps conference this week, if you checked into the Microsoft stand you got a free bag, which I got. I was happy to do that because there was a real-world exchange.
Rhys
Why did you want the badge?
It’s an extremely good question. There is absolutely no reason to give a [damn] what badge you get on Foursquare. But it’s an excuse to have a meet-up and feel like you’ve achieved something. It’s the first super swarm in the UK, so it’s nice to feel a part of that, I guess.
Richard, a self-confessed Foursquare addict, made the two-hour journey from Birmingham just for the super swarm badge
Why make the trip?
It’s essentially to be in a room with 300 other Foursquare geeks who are so into the same thing you’re into… I dunno, I don’t understand it myself. On Tuesday I ran two half marathons just to get my marathon badge, on Runkeeper and Foursquare. It’s the sense of achievement.
Don’t you get bored of checking in?
No, I don’t. When my girlfriend and I went to Madrid, I racked up £50 worth of roaming charges by checking into Foursquare and registering tips.
M@, editor of Londonist, a blog about London, which helped to promote the event
Londonist has contributed lots of tips that people see when they check in – why?
From a Londonist point of view, what we are all about is telling the story of London. Foursquare adds an extra dimension, the thing that’s missing from a blog and Twitter – that geolocation aspect. That’s the best thing about London is its rich history by location. It’s a new playground for us.
Why do badges matter?
We are all British here. We are stamp collectors and trainspotters. The collecting of things is almost instinctive for us. They’ve done it really well. They have not made badges too easy to get and there are not too many of them, so every badge is precious. You change your behaviour sometimes to collect new badges. I’ve found myself moving onto one last bar just to collect a new badge.
But there were some sceptics in the midst of the super swarm.
Iain Dodsworth, founder of Tweetdeck, said (on Twitter, naturally) that he was giving up on Foursquare after gaining the super swarm badge. He said he was “done” with the game aspect of Foursquare but would use Facebook Places instead, which “had more utility when baked into the Facebook platform, as a simple feature”.
“Checking-in everywhere was getting a bit tired,” he said. “The sense of freedom of not checking-in when first entering a building is pretty valuable.”
Paul Clarke, a “social photographer” and digital advisor to Boris Johnson, the (actual) mayor of London, said: “I get everything I need from particularly Twitter, in terms of social networks. I can find people, I can be found, I can not be found, I’ve seen nothing that Foursquare would add to any of that really.”
Are you a Foursquare addict or cynic? Let us know why in the comments.
