Foursquare, the location-based information service, surpassed two million users today.
It still isn't as large as some other location-based services but appears to have the sharpest growth pattern (it only surpassed one million users three months ago). Its flexibility as a tool and its system of recognition and rewards appears to have struck a chord.
Newsrooms need to consider it seriously, without a doubt. Even if it requires a fair amount of management to keep your location updated, and even if it raises some questions about privacy and security, there are ways to implement Foursquare without running risk.
Zombie Journalism has assembled eight basic ways in which Foursquare can be used:
1. Finding a source with a specific tie to a location.
2. Finding a source on the scene.
3. Finding out where your contacts are.
4. Alerting audiences to the location of news.
5. Providing tips on locations.
6. Learn about a place.
7. See where people are.
8. Say where you are.
It is only the last point that concerns some news managers, who aren't sure disclosing location is safe for journalists and who also wonder if their competitive advantage might be surrendered by alerting people where certain information resides.
That said, if we are into an era increasingly of location-based media, the media will increasingly have to understand the location-based entities.
It still isn't as large as some other location-based services but appears to have the sharpest growth pattern (it only surpassed one million users three months ago). Its flexibility as a tool and its system of recognition and rewards appears to have struck a chord.
Newsrooms need to consider it seriously, without a doubt. Even if it requires a fair amount of management to keep your location updated, and even if it raises some questions about privacy and security, there are ways to implement Foursquare without running risk.
Zombie Journalism has assembled eight basic ways in which Foursquare can be used:
1. Finding a source with a specific tie to a location.
2. Finding a source on the scene.
3. Finding out where your contacts are.
4. Alerting audiences to the location of news.
5. Providing tips on locations.
6. Learn about a place.
7. See where people are.
8. Say where you are.
It is only the last point that concerns some news managers, who aren't sure disclosing location is safe for journalists and who also wonder if their competitive advantage might be surrendered by alerting people where certain information resides.
That said, if we are into an era increasingly of location-based media, the media will increasingly have to understand the location-based entities.
