For the past few weeks, non social-media savvy people (those douche bags, eh?) and even loads of Twitter and Facebook friends of mine have been asking me the same question (not without irritation, mind you)
It’s a difficult one to answer. But if I would like to do so without getting jargon in between, I would say – vanity and social gratifications.
RWW recently did some really cool and detailed thinking on why people are using LBS and here’s the summary of it:
- Serendipity and Connections
- For the win
- As a trvelogue
But I think that the core and basic reason why anyone uses @foursquare is this inbuilt inherent social need of human beings, which require us to proclaim proudly of what we have won in any game. The pride that comes with being popular and cool tech-savvy traveler. The pride of showing prizes and records we have earned in our life. The pride of having our own unique identity (vanity) in this cluttered world. The pride of owning a place, because well if you can’t own it in real life, might as well do it in a virtual world.
And this is social psychology at its basic, which has till now, is currently, and will always remain true till the dusk of time. And it looks as if businesses are starting to make use of this behaviour.
