Tech Talk: Checking out of Foursquare
This article was first published by dmcityview.com As cool as Justin Timberlake is, what’s the first thing you think of when you hear his name? He’s a singer, right? Nevermind that for the last decade J.T. has been trying desperately to be taken seriously as an actor. Shifting public perception is hard — for entertainers, politicians, companies, even websites. No one is learning that lesson harder than the once-popular location-based application Foursquare. In 2009, at the South By Southwest Interactive technology conference, or SXSWi, Foursquare dominated the hearts and minds of the tech world. Foursquare provided a social network for smartphone users to check in online to locations and share with their friends where parties were, what restaurants were exciting, and basically any location that was happening at that moment. The cherry on top of the GPS cake was Foursquare’s scoreboard for user check-ins, “Mayorships” for users who checked in the most at specific locatio...