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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."
If you never get off the couch, why do you need a mobile app?
... all the way to the bank.
FourGoHookupPlaces: for telling your friends when and who you procreate with! BONUS: use your iphone's built-in accelerometer to compute your "performance", and try to best your friends! Become the virtual "mayor" of PEOPLE! Make lovemaking an ONLINE social game!
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
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.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
...they eat, they sleep and they shit. So where is the mobile app where one can "like" Charmin? Surely that'd reach an even bigger demographic than TV!
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Does this work with Friendster and myspace?
This ushers in a whole new golden era of pointless web apps that makes me wonder how much information stupid people are willing to share without their knowledge. Incredibly there is no limit.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
I'm going to create a social network that links one person up with another based on similarities between their porn downloads! Just one problem... what should I call it?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In these days when the economy is in rough shape, unemployment is high, and jobs aren't easy to come by, where are people getting all this time to do this stuff?
Personally, between work, school, and girlfriend, I am often at a crossroads where I must only choose two of the three. Girlfriend has been in Norway for over two weeks, and school doesn't start until the 30th, so I've just had work and I still only manage to pull about 50 hours a week. It seems to me there are lot of people who are lucky and have enough free time, or there are a lot of people slacking off in other areas of their life. Hell, it took me 30 minutes just to find a parking spot when I got home at midnight last night.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
You're not even going the right way. You should have turned left before. It's funny actually, when you think about it.
Someday we'll remember this and laugh and laugh and laugh... Ohoh boy.