Abstract
Foursquare was a mobile social networking application that enabled people to share location with friends in the form of “check-ins.” The visualization of surrounding known social connections as well as unknown others has the potential to impact how people coordinate social encounters and forge new social ties. While many studies have explored mobile phones and sociability, there is a lack of empirical research examining location-based social network’s (LSBNs) from a sociability perspective. Drawing on a dataset of original qualitative research with a range of Foursquare users, the paper examines the application in the context of social coordination and sociability in three ways. First, the paper explores if Foursquare is used to organize certain social encounters, and if so, why. Second, the paper examines the visualization of surrounding social connections and whether this leads to “serendipitous encounters.” Lastly, the paper examines whether the use of Foursquare can produce new social relationships.
Highlights
Digital media technologies increasingly affect how people understand and interact with their environment
Our research found that while participants used Foursquare in a variety of social situations, there was a significant emphasis on interactions in which participants were not sure what time they would be available to meet with friends
Instead of picking up the phone and calling them, you would just find the person, see where they were. As long as they had checked-in you would know that they were at that particular place. If they were going for a drink or to a restaurant, you wouldn’t have to worry about rushing out the door or following them, you can just wait until they checked-in, and meet them there. (Dennis) I was going to meet up with a friend and I didn’t know where I was going to be and I just said, check where I am on Foursquare and you’ll know where I am. (David)
Summary
Digital media technologies increasingly affect how people understand and interact with their environment. As Townsend[1] prophetically suggested, “portable digital communication tools . Will undoubtedly lead to fundamental transformations in individuals’ perceptions of self, and the world, and the way they collectively construct that world.”. One of the main contributors to the shift Townsend predicted was the mobile web. The mobile web allows people to engage with digital and location-based information on the move. The city has become “a hybrid of the physical and the digital.”[2] When considered alongside smartphones and location-based social networks (LBSNs), the mobile web has the potential to affect how people engage with both their surroundings and each other.[3, 4, 5, 6] This potential can be seen in the LBSN Foursquare
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