Facebook Is Set to Geo-Locate You (Fast Company)
My first question is, "Can I turn it off?"
If you LOVE Gowalla and 4SQ, perhaps you will LOVE Facebook with Geo updating. For my attention, I cannot stand people's auto-gowalla updates that start like this, "I'm at …." To me it's the Twitter equivalent to saying "going to get a Coke" then "going to get lunch" then "going to the bathroom."
I mean, seriously, if I wanted to monitor your exact whereabouts I'd a put an electronic collar on you. Perhaps this is the next parenting tool. Give your kid a phone, geo-tag it and let Gowalla do the rest. Or Facebook for that matter.
Clearly some people love geo-locating apps. There are games with 4sq and gowalla that tweet things like "I just became the mayor of Starbucks on 6th and Congress, Austin, Texas" But again, I don't really think that's a tweet of value.
And that's really what it boils down to. Yes I can UF you. (unfollow) And yes I can complain every time you "check in." But then I'm an ass and you may or may not agree. Whatever…
But what I want express is think about what you tweet. Think about the "value of the tweet." If your stream is full of "I'm at…" and "I'm the mayor of simpleton…" well, I'm just not that into your status-update-auto-geo-gowalla-4sq stream. I anticipate that some tool soon will be able to selectively filter all tweets by some criteria, perhaps it always exists. A but until that day turn off the auto check-in or auto-tweet-my-location setting. Or let me know you don't appreciate me telling you how or what to tweet.
I'm cool with that.
But I'm not cool with hearing what you had for breakfast, seeing a picture of that breakfast (not a foodie, sorry), or that you are done with breakfast and have just pulled into a gas station to fill-er-up. "I'm at Chevron on …"
Do you think Facebook will put Gowalla and 4sq into a sleeper hold after launch?
@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/geo-FB
Check out the Facebook Fails Index
And the mother of it all: The F-Bomb and F-Book: The F-Book Manifesto! [Facebook = F-Book]
See also:
- The Twitter Way
- The TwitterTools Matrix
- My Twitter Lists for everything from Green, to Austin Friends 1 (500 limit reached), Austin Friends 2, to Social Media Mavens.
