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What people like about it is that they don't have to pay the credit card companies their 4% of the sales. Instead 4square is only about 2% so small business gets to keep more of their money.

I believe you are thinking of Square which performs credit card payments, however the article is about Four Square which is some social restaurant service I had not heard of until this article. I agree that Square is immensely popular, even here in Alaska.

If they don't want their privacy violated they shouldn't be telling the whole world what they're doing on a minute by minute basis.

The point wasn't to tell the whole world, it was to tell a selected group of friends.

I signed up to Foursquare after seeing two things in one day: I'd met a friend in central London. His phone "pinged" a little later, saying another friend had "checked in" to a nearby bookshop. We called him, and met up. The coffee shop we went to had an offer of a free larger drink for checking in.

Since then, I've never crossed paths with one of the few people I've added on Foursquare, and never received a special offer from a business. It's been about a year, and it's probably time I lost interest in it.

I've just received an email from Foursquare:

Hello Foursquare community!

2012 has been a pretty huge year. We’ve released over fifty new features, welcomed nearly 15,000,000 new people to Foursquare, and had our 3,000,000,000th check-in. It’s a bit clichéd to say this, but your support really is what keeps us going day after day.

As our product evolves, one of the things we do is update our policies to match it. And a big aspect of that is privacy (something we think about a lot). This email lays out a couple changes that we’ll be making to our privacy policy in the coming month, and explains how they affect you and what you can do about it.

We know that privacy policies can be dense, so we put together a high-level document that we think of as our “Privacy 101.” It describes, in an easy-to-read way, how we build privacy into our product. While it doesn't replace the legal need for the complete description of our privacy practices (which you can read here), we hope it helps you better understand how we think about privacy. We’ve also added new explanations of how privacy works throughout the app in our FAQs, including our default privacy settings and how they can be adjusted.

In addition to creating and refining those documents, we want to point out two specific changes to our policy, both of which will go into effect on January 28, 2013.

1. We will now display your full name. Currently, Foursquare sometimes shows your full name and sometimes shows your first name and last initial (“John Smith” vs. “John S.”). For instance, if you search for a friend in Foursquare, we show their full name in the results, but when you click through to their profile page you don’t see their last name. In the original versions of Foursquare, these distinctions made sense. But we get emails every day saying that it's now confusing. So, with this change, full names are going to be public. As always, you can alter your ‘full name’ on Foursquare at https://foursquare.com/settings.

2. A business on Foursquare will be able to see more of their recent customers. Currently, a business using Foursquare (like your corner coffee shop) can see the customers who have checked in in the last three hours (in addition to the most recent and their most loyal visitors). This is great for helping store owners identify their customers and give them more personal service or offers. But a lot of businesses only have time to log in at the end of the day to look at it. So, with this change, we're going to be showing them more of those recent check-ins, instead of just three hours worth. As always, if you'd prefer not to permit businesses to see when you check into their locations going forward, you can uncheck the box under ‘Location Information’ at https://foursquare.com/settings/privacy.

The Foursquare of today is so different than the first version that launched in 2009, and we appreciate that you let us continue to evolve and build our vision. This occasionally means altering our privacy policy. When we do, we make it a

If they don't want their privacy violated they shouldn't be telling the whole world what they're doing on a minute by minute basis.

The point wasn't to tell the whole world, it was to tell a selected group of friends.

I signed up to Foursquare after seeing two things in one day: I'd met a friend in central London. His phone "pinged" a little later, saying another friend had "checked in" to a nearby bookshop. We called him, and met up. The coffee shop we went to had an offer of a free larger drink for checking in.

Since then, I've never crossed paths with one of the few people I've added on Foursquare, and never received a special offer from a business. It's been about a year, and it's probably time I lost interest in it.

I've just received an email from Foursquare:

Hello Foursquare community!

2012 has been a pretty huge year. We’ve released over fifty new features, welcomed nearly 15,000,000 new people to Foursquare, and had our 3,000,000,000th check-in. It’s a bit clichéd to say this, but your support really is what keeps us going day after day.

As our product evolves, one of the things we do is update our policies to match it. And a big aspect of that is privacy (something we think about a lot). This email lays out a couple changes that we’ll be making to our privacy policy in the coming month, and explains how they affect you and what you can do about it.

We know that privacy policies can be dense, so we put together a high-level document that we think of as our “Privacy 101.” It describes, in an easy-to-read way, how we build privacy into our product. While it doesn't replace the legal need for the complete description of our privacy practices (which you can read here), we hope it helps you better understand how we think about privacy. We’ve also added new explanations of how privacy works throughout the app in our FAQs, including our default privacy settings and how they can be adjusted.

In addition to creating and refining those documents, we want to point out two specific changes to our policy, both of which will go into effect on January 28, 2013.

1. We will now display your full name. Currently, Foursquare sometimes shows your full name and sometimes shows your first name and last initial (“John Smith” vs. “John S.”). For instance, if you search for a friend in Foursquare, we show their full name in the results, but when you click through to their profile page you don’t see their last name. In the original versions of Foursquare, these distinctions made sense. But we get emails every day saying that it's now confusing. So, with this change, full names are going to be public. As always, you can alter your ‘full name’ on Foursquare at https://foursquare.com/settings.

2. A business on Foursquare will be able to see more of their recent customers. Currently, a business using Foursquare (like your corner coffee shop) can see the customers who have checked in in the last three hours (in addition to the most recent and their most loyal visitors). This is great for helping store owners identify their customers and give them more personal service or offers. But a lot of businesses only have time to log in at the end of the day to look at it. So, with this change, we're going to be showing them more of those recent check-ins, instead of just three hours worth. As always, if you'd prefer not to permit businesses to see when you check into their locations going forward, you can uncheck the box under ‘Location Information’ at https://foursquare.com/settings/privacy.

The Foursquare of today is so different than the first version that launched in 2009, and we appreciate that you let us continue to evolve and build our vision. This occasionally means altering our privacy policy. When we do, we make it a

Rarely take bart, only when I have business in Oakland, and every experience has been from inconvinant to pure hell.

OK, BART isn't exactly an Uber cab but it's hardly "pure hell". I used to commute between Daly City and Embarcadero each morning and afternoon, and it was nothing if not unexciting. The trains departed on time and arrived on time, and the only inconvenience was that I couldn't refresh Twitter or text my wife between stations while underground. Now I frequently ride between Fruitvale and Embarcadero, and the least pleasant aspect is that you get jostled around a little bit on the way through Oakland. I even get 3G service while under the bay (get your "BART: Transbay Tube" foursquare checking while you wait!).

Crowded, sometimes, but the BART is nowhere near what you describe.

Try running a business using only those metrics - but make a reservation at your local bankruptcy court first, because you're going to need it. Those metrics don't tell you what brought customers into the store, or why those that left without buying didn't buy, etc... (Just for some very basic examples.)

Have you actually looked at FourSquare, or do you just live in a delusional world?

Have a look for Starbucks in New York.

The one with the most check-ins is "72 Spring St at Crosby St New York, NY 10012". 7,813 check-ins. From From August 2 2010 to March 15, 2011, there were 38 comments.

I'd be willing to bet that they serve well over 10,000 customers/month. In the roughly 5 months period (say 50,000 customers) 38 customers left feedback. That's a sample of 0.076% of the customers.

But, lets have a look at the comments on there. I'll hand pick a few for you.

Bobby B. Check out Bobby Berk Home two doors South on Crosby.

Todd B. Great place to take a piss

Hannah S. unlock the starbucks 40th badge here

Alex F. Alex Frecon was here. And it was good.

Jo J. American runs on Star buck lol

Hafiz J. letih, minum2 jap...

Bruno J. Gossip Girl

Richado T. #turnred pls gv me sime badge here..how? tell me..

Gilang F. oiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...!! drink in hereee

Erick P. blah blah blah dough

Gilang F. ternyata sama aja rasanya.!!orang kopinya juga eksport dr lampung.wakakakak

(translation: turns out it's just wrote.!! people also export coffee dr lampung.wakakakak)

Caitlin F. If you are a woman, regardless of age, beware of "hugh"..he will call you ma'am

Wow, the feedback is amazingly useful. We've learned that 31.6% of Starbucks customers leave absolutely worthless feedback. Extrapolate that out to the estimated customer base, and now you know that there are 15,800 customers you can't expect useful answers from.

Or more precisely... The sample set is too small for any useful purpose.

And then in your very next paragraph, you prove my point. The metrics needed to determine staffing levels go beyond the simple minded ones you posit above.

No, I said a business must be run by a business person, who can identify their trends in their market. It may mean wearing plain clothes, sitting somewhere in the dining area and listening to conversations. It may mean asking random people how they liked their experience. Getting just 1 personal feedback per hour (assuming a 8 hour day) gives you over 1,600 data points to work with. Working with the useless data points (unless you want to take a piss, and blah blah blah) is more likely to ruin your company.

But who am I to guess. With what I found online about you, you're obviously the business genius. Well, when you aren't vacuuming the soap suds out of your washer.

Then why does Disney provide the Fast Pass system so people *don't* have to stand in line for an hour? (Hint: Disney understands the value of customer experience, you do not.)

Actually, Disney realizes they can herd people better. Before that, anyone who wanted to skip the lines would rent a wheelchair for one person in their party, and then everyone with them goes to the front of the line. Then you'd have backed up lines with people of questionabl

Well, not really. I worked in the industry that trades that information, and provides it to private investigators, law enforcement, and collections companies. Others provide it to anyone willing to pay. I know what some use for data sources. I still know people involved with those companies. They talk about their data sources, what they can provide to anyone who wants it.

Have you ever searched for yourself on intelius.com? How about looked at the current value of your house on zillow.com? Maybe searched for someone on zabasearch.com? Where do you think they get their information? Yes, they buy it.

I've also worked with people who have worked in other business segments of the same industry. For example, one company handles information used by marketing companies. They sell customized lists. You could get every independent car dealership within 100 miles of a particular city. Another company only trades in email lists. The more details with those email addresses the better. Want the email address for everyone in Middletown, Kansas? They'll be happy to provide it? Add to the list from Foursquare would then give you every person residing in the town, *and* those who "check in" there.

Those companies buy access to the credit reports. Not just hand picked ones, but all of them. They're expensive to buy, but they are out there. Does it show on your credit report? Then it's accessible. Search for "Experian File One" or "TransUnion TUCS file". You're looking at a 7-figure price, plus a whole stack of qualifications, but for the right price, they're more than happy to sell information on every person in the country.

They also buy lists or access to the lists of anything they can. Some it was perfectly legal, and some not so legal. For example, and unhappy and underpaid employee of a cell company may just happen to copy off the list of subscribers, and sell it for tens of thousands of dollars. Some random hacker gets a dump of the Sony database. They may not be in it for the credit card numbers. They may have wanted a verified list of names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers. The card numbers will stop working pretty quickly if they attempt to use them. The rest of the information is worth a fortune. How big was that data breech again? Oh ya, only 100 million users. That'll have a nice price tag on it when it goes to market. Of course, it will be filtered to remove seeds, and handed through so many people, it'd be easier to find the Holy Grail than the source.

If there is information available online, no matter how tedious it is to click through the forms, they have programs diligently pulling down ever bit they can. You can't guess every name on Facebook, but you can crawl through it pretty quickly. How hard would be be to write a script to request (through various anonymous proxies, with changing USER_AGENT strings):

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1
through
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=2100000000

It'd take a while to run through 2,100,000,000 pages (that's the upper limit I found by changing the id number by hand, without redirecting automatically back to the front page). That's if you have one computer doing them one at a time. How about 100 servers with 100 crawler processes each? 210,000 seconds, or 2.43 days. It may seem like a lot of horsepower to do it, but it's very profitable if even a small percentage have their profiles open for anyone to see.

But what about Foursquare, since that was the topic?

https://foursquare.com/user/1
through

funny... there's a jam3s on twitter who appears to be an intern at Intel in the UK. but surely that must just be a coincidence.

That would be myself (found this article via hit refers to my site) and it is just a coincidence. Just an average IT guy

funny... there's a jam3s on twitter who appears to be an intern at Intel in the UK. but surely that must just be a coincidence.

and there's a picture of him camping:
http://yfrog.com/h4lltkrj

funny... there's a jam3s on twitter who appears to be an intern at Intel in the UK. but surely that must just be a coincidence.

Foursquare is a mobile application that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. It is a friend-finder, a social city guide and a game that challenges users to experience new things, and rewards them for doing so. Foursquare lets users "check in" to a place when they're there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they've been and who they've been there with. For more information on how foursquare works, see our searchable FAQ. http://foursquare.com/about

Need to find Osama bin Laden? There's an app for that.