I asked noted Foursquare critic Judy Gombita to weigh in on her dislike for the little application out of New York City. Here is her very thorough response to my questions.

Backgrounder, why I tweet, the (un)follow question and my take on the obnoxicity of Foursquare (a.k.a. @boresquare)

For perspective, in the fall of 2008, my Twitter account started life as a dedicated travel microblog, as I was visiting Australia for five weeks. I let family, friends and industry colleagues know about its existence. (Note: the first two groups hardly made use of it.) Although I didn’t make it a private account, I was surprised to find @CanuckDownUnder steadily picking up followers from various disciplines and countries (the majority then strangers to me). This was almost from its inception, during the length of my time in Oz and to present day. After returning to Toronto (in mid-December), I decided to retain my Twitter account, eventually changing its name to @jgombita. I also updated my bio, to reflect areas of expertise, experience and interests.

My account is a personal one. My main incentives and goals are to widen my (international) network, source and exchange information, monitor trends (in the public relations, communication management and social media industries), and to debate ideas and events, particularly those related to current affairs. My secondary incentive and goals are to be amused…and (hopefully) to amuse.

The third-party Foursquare application does none of these things for me when updates from followers appear in my Twitterstream.

My unspoken follow contract

Although I occasionally initiate a follow, the majority of my (reciprocated) follows were initiated by the other person. Unless it’s a spam or obvious marketing account, I often wonder why. I do not auto-follow back. Often I don’t follow back until the follower has commenced some form of engagement, which often serves to let me know why they followed me (i.e., a shared area of interest). I follow very few company accounts, except for those related to media, causes/associations (i.e., NFPs) or the arts. I am not a fan of employees (corporate or, especially, agency) using Twitter to market their products, services or clients. That’s not why I’m here. I want to get to know people better, but generally I’m also not interested in the minutiae of their lives, unless they somehow coalesce with one of my stated Bio interests. Lack of interest would include geo-location applications that tell me where someone is at the moment.

Because I’m not quick to follow/follow-back, the conundrum is that I’m also reluctant to unfollow someone. Unless, of course, he or she proves to be abusive (personally or to other people or companies) or I find very little of value in their Twitterstream. (I know it’s ironic that I started my Twitter account as a hyper-individual travel account, but at least that was the implicit contract from the beginning.)

In the unspoken follow contract, individuals are free to unfollow me if I don’t “satisfy” them in turn. That’s not to say I tweet to be liked, to please or on demand….

Billboards or Twitter, borrowing the “implicit contract” concept

Billboards are a symptom of a large, growing problem in the age of persuasion. While much of the work is highly creative, it, like many other media, must figure out a way to honour an implicit contract between advertisers and consumers which, simply put, promises that advertisers must give you something in exchange for their imposition on your time, attention, and space. An ad might offer useful information, an insight, or a solution to a problem. It might help pay for the TV show you’re watching or the magazine you’re reading. It might simply entertain you. The key is that it offers some tangible benefit.

Your job as a consumer is to discern which marketers are keeping their end of the bargain and which are not. With that knowledge, you’ll have the power to reward the honest brokers and punish the transgressors. I suspect few people realize they have that power, but they—that is, you—really do.

[bolding mine]

The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture, Chapter 2: “Breaking the Contract,” Terry O’Reilly & Mike Tennant

But back to Foursquare. A few months ago I found my Twitterstream getting log-jammed by a few people announcing they’d “unlocked” this or that badge. That they were Mayor of SomewhereIrrelevant. Even though I rarely share my meals out, I would find out (on almost a daily basis) what restaurant a twit was dining at. Or where s/he was shopping.

Why do I need to know this irrelevant information? It not like I’m being asked for an opinion on great places to eat or shop, or I’m being invited to come. The @boresquare update is just there, log-jamming.

Think of it like someone you liked and knew (at least a bit) inviting you to a party where you were promised lots of interesting people and lively conversation. You go to the party and, for the most part, have a great time. But a few people have dragged in a Karaoke machine from outside. Even though the majority of people aren’t interested, they keep singing songs and interrupting your conversations. And maybe they’re not even songs you know or particularly like. Or they sing badly. Although you are still having a pretty good time at the party, the presence of the Karaoke machine was not part of the implicit contract when you agreed to come.

Foursquare is like a Karaoke machine.

Reactions from twit fans of @boresquare

As I indicated, I’m actually hesitant to unfollow people. That’s because usually I’ve invested some time in to cultivating the contacts and because I know it’s sometimes hurtful to be on the receiving end of an unfollow.

With Foursquare, I decided that I owed it to people to make my feelings known, instead of being on a low-annoyance boil and/or seemingly randomly unfollowing. (And with most I really didn’t want to unfollow; I just wanted the log-jams to stop.)

Some of my tweets I just offered up an opinion, not related to a specific @boresquare update. If I know the person well (perhaps we’ve met in real life or have an ongoing relationship beyond public tweets) I’ll ask him or her directly—sometimes as a response tweet, sometimes as a direct message (DM). With a couple of people I’ve inquired—in a non-threatening way—what they get out of @boresquare. I’m serious in my interest. One person I didn’t know well (couldn’t even remember how the original follow-back happened) I did tweet back @IreallyDontCareSquare. OK, that wasn’t very gracious. And that’s probably why that person quietly unfollowed me, shortly thereafter. But as there was virtually nothing invested in that relationship, I wasn’t bothered and easily unfollowed back. There was another person who reacted to (what I thought was a relatively mild rebuke—and it wasn’t my first one at the individual) in a rather cutting tweet. Said unfollowing was always an option. And did…a few minutes ahead of me.

Quantifying the numbers

In thinking about it, I count 10 individuals in my Twitterstream who do (or did) use @boresquare on a regular basis. As I said, two unfollowed me after I indicated unhappiness in snarky tweets. I’ve DM’d three people, only one (the one I know the best) who responded with an explanation. Of those three, two are still following me.

Publicly, three people have responded with reasons (we remain mutual follows). One person told me that it was a proving to be a great agency “team-building” exercise. And, later, that the agency was exploring the third-party application for possible use with clients. (To both answers—honest though they may be—What’s In It For Me?!) Another person just said they liked the geo-location aspect. I sent him to a resource for a reasonable alternative to pushing messages into the Twitterstream (more, in a bit).

I think the response that surprised me the most was the individual who said that one of his clients was in the restaurant business and they had been testing the application out for possible marketing purposes (a legitimate answer), but if it was that annoying he would stop using Twitter, as my good opinion was more important to him. That was incredibly touching. I tweeted my thanks and appreciation.

One person—whom I actually consider a first-rate industry resource and (offline) good friend—invited me to either “idle or unfollow.” I chose the second, but did indicate to let me know when the shine of this new tool had worn off. And I know I will be reciprocating the follow again.

I’ve quietly unfollowed one person using the application, without any warning. I don’t know the person that well and (quite frankly) didn’t find some other tweets that useful or interesting. There’s another person in my Twitterstream who seems oblivious to my dislike and regularly tweets up the log-jams. I haven’t said anything—yet. And I haven’t unfollowed. Why? Because this was an instance where I actually followed the person first. I’m still debating what to do with that one.

Of note

I do get positive reactions or retweets from several other people who aren’t fans of @boresquare, either. And I’ve seen at least three people doing their own tweets against it. Of course some users do defend it. But what I don’t see are non-users speaking up in support of the third-party Foursquare application. What does that tell you? There aren’t too many people who like Karaoke parties, perchance?

A reasonable alternative

It was the very resourceful and friendly Ottawa-based Kelly Rusk of Media Miser—an admitted fan and frequent user of Foursquare—who shared information with me that users can opt not to have @boresquare go into their Twitterstream (and I think Facebook). My understanding is that it can be permanently turned Off. At a minimum, one can answer No to each (or all) update. To me this analogous to gender-specific language: If a reasonable alternative exists, why not use it?!

Why do some people find value in Foursquare?

I only have the handful of answers I received. I suspect that the majority of people who use Foursquare are of a certain generation (or a few) that are really into what Hal Niedzviecki (The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors) terms “oversharing.”

We know that Gen Y has grown up being hyper-connected (“hyper-individualistic”) with their friends. They also tend to have (helicopter) parents who hovered over them, telling them their every utterance and move was brilliant. Foursquare helps them to document those moves. Maybe they’re doing it for their parents, so that mom and dad know where (or what) they’re eating, and that they’re shopping for a warm toque! J

Although I’m not a fan of that kind of self-absorption (and note that I don’t think everyone in their 20s and 30s is that insular and hyper-connected), what I find more disingenuous is the perceived marketing aspect to Foursquare: people are willingly offering up information on their habits as consumers, and adding to that data pool that is leaving everyone exposed. (I no longer give my phone number or area code to Winners for just that reason. And I certainly wouldn’t tweet them and provide marketers—or inflict my followers—with that information, either.)

I’m wondering whether Foursquare has released demographics on its “early adopters.” Perhaps if there is significant take-up by people in their 40s to 60s I’m snarking up the wrong tree. (But I doubt it.)

Whether or not Foursquare will prove to be a short-term fad (please!) or the face of the future has yet to be determined. Why people want to get more marketing or advertising on their mobile device is beyond me (is a coupon for 15 per cent off really worth it?). Regardless, Foursquare was designed for cell phones. It wasn’t designed for—or by—the Twitter platform or people.

Is Foursquare impacting one’s privacy?

I doubt Foursquare is impacting privacy overly much, as it’s unlikely one would be cyber-stalked (or robbed) in a restaurant or shopping mall, that it lends itself to identity theft, etc. As stated, for me what is more distasteful is ubiquitous marketing or advertising inherent in Foursquare (or at least its possibility), particularly if someone has invited it into his or her cell phone or imposed it onto a Twitterstream. I don’t think that is forward thinking. And I don’t think it is very “community” minded. Lastly, that it follows the “implied contract” (as per O’Reilly and Tennant).

Regarding surveillance and privacy, I think they are the strongest chapters in Hal Niedzviecki’s excellent and quite prescient book, The Peep Diaries. I’ll close with an extended (but relevant) quote from his Chapter Six, Escape from the Castle: Privacy in the Age of Peep:

“Before Peep culture took over from pop culture, corporations generally acquired private information for what at least they purported were the essentials: calculating insurance risk, providing loans, assessing security. Bunkered down as we were in our castles, we were more circumspect about our private lives and less willing to spew forth our preferences for puffed rice breakfast foods and variable mortgages. But since pop became Peep, and we started discovering how much value there is in sharing (and oversharing) a whole new class of corporations have come to the fore. They help us watch ourselves and our neighbors, and in the process they help themselves to just about everything we care to entrust to their “free” services.

What’s that saying? Nothing in life is free. In order to provide advertisements that are smarter, more effective, and more “contextual,” Google, MySpace, and other Peep companies and Web sites are storing your searches and amalgamating them into useful kernels of data which don’t necessarily identify you individually, but certainly create a very detailed picture of a person they think is like you.”

Judy Gombita is a Toronto-based public relations and communication management specialist. She’s been the Canadian contributor to the international, collaborative blog, PR Conversations, since its launch in April 2007. Her most recent post is An effective communication campaign: #PicturesTalk