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Foursquare Will Display Users' Full Names By Default
Location services can be useful and fun, but, depending on how paranoid ("cautious") you are, you might already dislike the idea of a social-network dashboard keeping track of where you are at a given moment. After all, bad guys can use computers, too.
Now, Foursquare may up your level of caution just a bit: CNET reports that "Beginning January 28, 2013, users' 'full names' will be displayed across the check-in service and venue owners will have increased access to users' check-in data, the company announced in an e-mail sent to users late last night." Users, though, "will still have control of the name displayed by altering their 'full name' in their settings," and can opt out of the increased flow of data to business owners. For users' sake, I hope Foursquare doesn't go in for the "real names" fetish to the extent that both Google and Facebook have.
It's bad enough with fully, easily traceable public nicknames. The Internet has become something that I no longer want to have anything to do with. And yet there is no way to escape all this madness short of moving out to some cabin in the woods and living like a survivalist, which I really don't want.
You really try to reach out to people, but it's always in through one ear and out the other. They don't get it. They think you are crazy. It's maddening.
Even this site where I post this on, Slashdot, calls me an "Anonymous Coward" in an attempt to guilt-trip me into registering and logging in for anyone to track all my posts and violate my privacy.
The whole idea of "checking in" was ridiculous to me in the first place. It immediately reminded me of the cartoon where the clever mice give the cat a bell as a gift. Why should anybody be surprised if they want to amp up the level of stupidity an extra notch?
Customers like they do now for Yelp. Twice I've been confronted after leaving a bad review on Yelp. The last time the manager at a Jimmy Johns was able to figure out that I worked in the same building as the restaurant and talked to my boss. So now Foursquare is getting into the business of facilitating the harassment and intimidation of customers.
Publicity. And it seems to work, there are at least two articles in the interweb, and there will be at least two more when they "graciously reverse direction"...
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.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Agreed. Foursquare is dying. Facebook allows check-ins, so no one is using foursquare. So if your website is dying how do you get some press coverage? Make an outrageous claim that you're going to publish the full names and locations of all of your customers! Instant news coverage! 3 days later, claim due to "public outcry" you're changing your mind! Instant hero and more press! Thousands of new users sign up to the website! Marketing Basics 101 right there
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I am really proud of the fact that I don't know what "Foursquare" is.
I really don't need to know what all of my friends are saying and doing at all times of the day and night. Shit, life is too short.
I wonder how many twenty-somethings are going to hit 40 and realize that they spent more time updating their social networks than actually doing something.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Foursquare, dying?
Do you have anything to back this up?
The enduring tendency of the human mind to hope for a good outcome.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!