“If I wanted to know these things, we’d be connected on Foursquare so I could follow along as you cruise through town going to meetings and running errands. If I’ve made the decision to not connect there, why then am I seeing your check-ins in my Twitter stream – and my Facebook stream – and often both? And, to make matters worse, since you’re not sure which service is going to win the geolocation war (see here and here), you’re using them all. For each stop in your day, you check-in with Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt, Whrrl and others. And it isn’t just you, there are more and more people doing this. I’m drowning in a sea of “I’m at Panera Bread (Free wifi FTW).” I can hardly wait for the Facebook geolocation feature to roll out soon (cue: sarcasm).”

Essentially, what bothers me about social media apps, though the tide is growing in support of it, is the redundant inclusion of features support by other apps in an effort to become the market leader. For example, as Irene alluded to, if I wanted to know where you were in your day, I would open a 4sq account and follow you explicitly. I am on twitter for the information exchange/sharing – not for geo updates. Since I should probably don a flame suit right about now, let me just close by saying when those geo updates do come across my stream, I do simply ignore them.

That I am having a life-changing ham sandwich NOW doesn’t matter to you, because you aren’t where I am.

Two years from now, when fate puts you on the corner where you CAN act on it, that’s a different story.

http://ike4.me/mbi4

I agree with you about having options. We can choose to ignore the updates that don’t interest us. When someone posts too much content which doesn’t interest me, they are likely not a good connection for me. This absolutely includes spammers of all types. I don’t think (most) LBS users are anywhere as problematic as they are. I wrote about the reasons I unfollow people, including spammers, here: http://j.mp/ilis6

Many thanks for sharing your perspective. It definitely adds to the conversation!

The reason I am very adamant about using these services is because they generate leads, conversation and business. Until such time that these services fail to provide biz I will continue to use them.

Here is the golden rule: If you don’t like the updates, just ignore them just like any other tweet that doesn’t peak your interests. There is no reason to protest the usage of these services. I don’t see as much hate for diet and “making money online” tweets. Maybe people should go after the diet pill spammers instead of wasting time against foursquare and gowalla.

My two cents.

It’s OK? If not, I’ll delete it…