Alice Marwick on foursquare as "prescriptive social software"
Alice Marwick on foursquare as “prescriptive social software”… [whole article]
There’s something here worth examining. What assumptions about “good” and “bad” socializing are built into social media? Locative social media is especially interesting because it directly affects how people move through the city. It can be terrifically fun and useful for people who fit its prescribed social model. Here in San Francisco, where I’m doing ethnographic work on social media users, foursquare has positively affected my social life. For example, on Monday night, I went to dinner with a friend. After dinner, I saw that two of my closest friends were at a local bar. We met them there, and over the course of the next four hours, about 10 other people showed up, all of whom found us through foursquare. Whether or not it’s wise to have a party in a bar on Monday night is arguable, but it was really fun. Likewise, last night, on my way to meet my friends at Cafe Du Nord, I detoured through Dolores Park to say hi to two friends who’d checked in there. We watched the sunset together and I went on my way.
… Alice gets in a way that I think a lot of our users do (read: we’re just starting and there’s a lot of work we need to do before we’re really cranking on this). The problem is that for everyone else I think we come across as a half-ass friend finder, half-ass cityguide, half-ass game… I can’t be any more sold on how powerful all three of these are when fused together the right way (though admittedly, I think we’re only about 25% of the way there. I posed some stuff in the comments of Alice post that touch upon this)
Also, not sure how I feel about the “prescriptive” part of things. We used to say that dodgeball was “facilitating serendipity” - allowing you to see around corners and thru walls to make it easier to meet up with your friends. I think with foursquare we’re on more of a “how can social tools expose you and then encourage you to experience new things… and on top of that reward you for doing them” (ha, working on a better tagline, but that’s the gist of it).
Anyway, Alice is super smart. Read the rest here: http://www.tiara.org/blog/?p=453 (and looking forward to part 2)
