This is a problem. Maybe I’m alone, but I seriously doubt it. First it was Loopt. Well, that kind of sucked so whatevs. But then Foursquare. Then BrightKite. Then Whrrl. Then Gowalla. Then Yelp. Then OMGICANTKEEPUP.
Do you know what this does to a girls day?
Get to work. Check in on Foursquare. Check in on Gowalla. Check in on Whrrl.
Go to lunch. Check in on Foursquare. Check in on Gowalla. Check in on Whrrl. Check in on Yelp. Drop recommendations, to-do’s and notes for the restaurant.
Get back to work. Check in on Foursquare. Check in on Gowalla. Check in on Whrrl.
Head to happy hour. Check in on Foursquare. Check in on Gowalla. Check in on Whrrl. Check in on Yelp. Drop recommendations, to-do’s and notes for the restaurant.
Get home. Check in on Foursquare. Check in on Gowalla. Check in on Whrrl.
Phew!
If you’re not familiar with LBS, or location based services you might wonder why in the world you would bother. Well, first off – I’m a freakin’ social media addict. These social sharing apps have built into themselves wonderfully addictive hooks that keep users coming back. So as any good addict does, I keep going back. On Foursquare there are concerns around keeping up to date with your friends as well as maintaining your mayorships (Get off my lawn!!). Yelp will note you as a Regular at your most visited locations and list you in a ‘top-users’ list for your city. And so on, and so forth. All of the hooks require continued participation and constant usage for you to benefit.
Recently the masses landed in Austin for SXSW – with a 40% increase in attendees from last year. These location based apps, most notably Foursquare and Gowalla, got a huge surge of attention, activity and new users.
While I love all of these apps, each for their own reasons, checking in to each of them at each new location is starting to get old. Surely I am not the only one. What I beg, what I plead, is for someone to please pretty please with sugar on top, please make an app – ONE APP – that I can check in to that will update all of the others. I know that probably seems lazy or even like cheating. Sure. Okay, so you have a point there. But still. I’ve heard many people say they would love to see something like this and I understand there are technological roadblocks. But I’d be willing to bet there are some wicked smart people working on this right now. So godspeed and please hurry!
Given the level of addiction among the users of these apps if you are a brick and mortar business I would highly suggest taking a look at these apps. There is a great deal of potential here for you – get creative, think outside of the PC and get in there early!
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Dude, I could totally build you that app… I owe you too much other work though… ekkk…
So tell me, a guy who hasn’t strolled over to yelp yet, why you take the time to comment and what not?
Somebody commented on your backstage idea about a company that’s doing this.
Check out http://check.in
… weird sentence.
@Damon – *JUST* learned about http://check.in. Beta TOTALLY requested!!
And the weird thing about that sentence really was that it didn’t seem weird to me. LOL
@Lyndon_Reid – I owe YOU so much work I probably shouldn’t have even written this post
So…why comment on Yelp? That’s an interesting question. I guess it really goes to the root of why anyone participates in any social network – they want to be heard. The Yelp community is really active and the reviews, when genuine, are quite helpful and it feels good to participate in a community like that. There’s probably a lot more psychology to it than that, but that’s my basic assumption. PLUS – if you are active enough you get ELITE status!!! Yes, you read that right: ELITE!!! #whateverthatsworth 
Hi Kristy,
Love the photo. It really does looks like an LBS addict. Thanks for trying Whrrl. We really appreciate it. We have some more fun stuff planned. I would love to have you in our beta program so you can have an early look. We are doing this purely to make your life harder.
Let me know.
John Kim
Hi John! Thanks to stopping by. I’ve loved what you all have been doing over there. The most recent update was really awesome. I’d love to see what you’re doing next. Thanks for the invite! Please feel free to get in touch with me at kristybolsinger at gmail dot com. Looking forward to seeing it!!
Hi Kristy. I think your feelings represent all of us who are highly engaged with LBS apps. I attended an interesting session about this at SXSW. I do like the promise of Google Latitude that will passively check you in. However, I still want to control when and what is published and where.
I find I check in on Foursquare to hit twitter and Gowalla to hit Facebook. Cool images!
It would seem someone would build an app that does check you into all of them, but only pings twitter/facebook once.
@mikedmerrill
@Mike – Thanks for sharing about Google Latitude. I like the idea of that, but I definitely do not want to be passively checking in anywhere. I mean let’s be honest – we don’t ALWAYS want people to know where we are. I definitely want to keep control over it. Especially if there are notifications involved.
I sure am glad you can relate. Makes me feel a little bit better about my apparent addiction