With the launch of the Huffington Post’s foursquare profile today, there are now two organizations regularly providing the latest news on foursquare. They’re using two completely different foursquare features to get the news out: shouts and tips. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
The Wall Street Journal provides their breaking news mostly through shouts tied to checkins, while their tips are mostly reserved for restaurant recommendations, etc. Shouts have the advantage of being visible immediately to anyone who follows their profile. They can be seen in users’ friends lists and as pop-up “pings” from the iPhone or Android apps (as long as the user is in the same city). Once the WSJ checks in to another venue, however, they’re lost forever. They never appear on the WSJ’s foursquare profile or the venue page.
The Huffington Post, on the other hand, is providing links to news articles on their site through tips on relevant venues. Foursquare users who follow their profile will see those tips as pop-ups when they check in to the venue or at another venue nearby. Anyone can see the tips at any time from either the Huffington Post’s foursquare profile, on the venue page, or in the list of nearby tips in their mobile app. These don’t have the immediacy of popping up for all followers as soon as they’re added, but they do carry a permanence that shouts lack.
Both of these methods have advantages and disadvantages. Shouts offer immediacy without permanence, while tips offer permanence but no immediacy.
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#1 by Zach Seward on July 6, 2010 - 5:39 pm
Great poll! I actually think that we both do both. (I handle part of the Journal’s Foursquare implementation, and we definitely leave tips based on our news coverage that aren’t just restaurant reviews.) But that’s beside the point, and you’ve definitely identified two distinct approaches. I don’t know which is better but am trying to get a sense for what people prefer. And still trying to wrap my head around the difference between traditional tips and the Huffington Post’s push notifications.
#2 by Chris Thompson on July 6, 2010 - 9:24 pm
Thanks for chiming in. I didn’t mean to imply that the WSJ’s tips were only for restaurant reviews, but it looks like the vast majority are. I’m glad to see you’re trying both. I’m sure it’s difficult to gauge on your end which are working best.
Nothing that the HuffPo is doing is particularly new on foursquare. Any user who follows a profile (the WSJ’s included) will see those same tip pop-ups when they check in at or near the venue where that brand has left tips.
#3 by Michael Bauser on July 6, 2010 - 7:11 pm
Using tips for breaking news won’t scale. If media organizations jump on Foursquare like they did Twitter and Facebook, then start flooding venue pages with short-duration tips, users won’t be able to find any of the normal tips. The “tips” section of any newsworthy venue will look like a trending topic stream on Twitter, repeating the same damn thing (“This bank was robbed, today,” “The play showing here got awful reviews,” “Angelia Jolie & Brad Pitt are staying at this hotel,” etc.) over and over and over.
This concern would be alleviated somewhat if Foursquare would hurry up and add some tip-filtering. Tools that surface popular tips, tips from preferred friends, etc., will be important for keeping tips useful.
#4 by Chris Thompson on July 6, 2010 - 9:27 pm
You’ve got a great point. At this point tips are adding more value than clutter, but I can definitely see a point where that scale would tip in the future. Filtering tips is a great start to a solution. It seems like a reddit-style voting system would add a lot of value, as would tapping each users’ social graph to surface the tips most relevant to them.