Over spring break, I encountered new road blocks with Foursquare. I went home to Northbrook, IL for the week and found it much more difficult to check in at locations there than it was here in Madison. Maybe this is because many of the buildings I go to are campus buildings and in Northbrook I spend a lot of time at home. Regardless, I was rapidly losing points because of my lack of check-ins. The biggest issue was that my house didn't have a location on Foursquare. Therefore, when I went home I could not check in anywhere. I found myself checking into the city I was in just to get more points! I checked into Evanston, IL just for the sake of getting points before heading to a restaurant in the town. One of my friends commented on the check in saying "Really, Evanston?" This shows my desperation. I think this is a negative aspect of Foursquare. Because Foursquare is a points driven site, it seems unfair that all locations are not on its 'radar'. However, it would also be impossible to have every address because then it would be inconvenient for users to find their exact location from a long list. I also have an app called "Find My Friends" and I believe this app has better features because of its ability to track users' exact locations. On "Find My Friends", users friend people and then can see where they are using locative services. Because one of the main objectives of Foursquare is to be able to track your friends (because of its friending feature), the app could improve by becoming more like "Find My Friends". However, Foursquare has advantages compared to this app because users can get tips and deals about places around them. If they are in their hometown, users might not need any tips and may favor "Find My Friends". I found the comparison of the two apps' features to be very interesting because they both have similar functions but are better at certain things.
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