Foursquare-Style Checking In For Couch Potatoes

This CNN article discusses a new breed of mobile "check-in" apps for people who aren't particularly mobile. The news apps were borne from the popularity of Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places, but instead of focusing on locations you've been, they spotlight movies and TV shows you watch, as well as books you read and video games you play. "These apps let users earn virtual rewards and meet fans with similar interests. Users also can push their check-ins to other sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, to keep the conversation going. They each have their own benefits on top of that, from giving users recommendations based on the things they already like to letting them unlock videos and other extras when they've become 'super fans' of a show. ... While people in the United States may all have different hobbies and engage in different activities away from home, 'we know most people do three things — they eat, they sleep and they watch TV,' [Miso's CEO, Somrat Niyogi said.] 'We think the market is massive. We think this is going to be a much bigger market' than location-based apps, he added."

Comments

GetGlue is great

[Daetrin]

I've been using GetGlue for a couple months and am still in love with it (unlike my fling with FourSquare that mostly died out after a few weeks.) Not only is GetGlue a lot more tailored for my geeky interests than FourSquare, it's nice to be able to check into stuff without worry about the frickin GPS coordinates being off and it claiming i'm not within 200 meters when i'm standing right inside the venue =P

Of course on the downside that means that there are a number of people on GetGlue who will check into anything and everything as frequently as possible just in order to accumulate stickers/badges/achievements. Personally i only check into stuff that i'm actually doing and the people who've accumulated hundreds of stickers, thousands of "friends", and tens of thousands of "liked" things can irk me a bit, but i try and just remind myself that it's not actually a contest, despite what some of them seem to think. I'd rather have my stickers and "likes" reflect who i actually am, rather than how obsessively i can click on links.

Perhaps i should check out the other sites mentioned in the article, though i'm not sure if i'd want to maintain a presence on more than one such site. Checking-in when i start watching a show or playing a game or reading a book isn't too bad, but having to do so at two or three different sites might start to get a bit cumbersome.