Okay, so you pull out of a venue and forgot to check-in. Or maybe you phone died while at the mall, so you put it back on the charger when you get in the car, open foursquare on your smartphone, and check-in to the two venues that you were just at. Well, I am not talking about you! Those situations are pretty understandable. But, what is not understandable is that person who has it out for you on foursquare, who might bully his or her way around in an effort to unethically and improperly gain mayorships. On top of that, this person decides to oust a loyal foursquare user who is playing by the rules, and he or she ousts this loyal user at a time when the business (venue) is actually not even open! That just takes the cake! At the same time, it seems that some of these cheaters are merely doing it because the current mayor is a heavy user. Look, I check-in a lot each and every day – sometimes, 20 or 30 times in a given day and sometimes just ten or fifteen. Let me set the record straight and say that merely checking in a lot does not mean that you are somehow cheating, but checking into three sit-down restaurants on the grid within 10 minutes is an indicator of potential drive-by check-in cheating (unless you are in the food court at a mall and are buying different food items from different restaurants for your family and/or friends). The [not so] funny thing is that many of these drive-by mayors are quite blatant about the check-ins and do so for many to see.
In my city, I happen to know of a foursquare user who seems to be the mayor of just about everything on a particular busy and heavily traveled road! This person suddenly goes to the same gym as I do each and every day; yet, I have never seen this person nor am I confident [for various reasons] that this person is even a member of the gym. Ironically, he worked out at that gym on Christmas, a day when that LA Fitness was not open to the public! Also, it seems that, since I actually do workout at the gym 99% of the days (regularly seven days per week) and have subsequently ousted this person on a few occasions, he/she suddenly appears to have decided to do business with the bank that I was the mayor of across the street; since he appears to bank there daily, I am now 4 days away from regaining the mayorship.
Look, this person and those like him/her are giving foursquare a black-eye. Also, as an avid foursquare user and venue manager for some of my clients’ venues, it is discouraging to see people doing this. For businesses, it is giving some slightly inflated analytical data to. To the average user, this type of behavior is giving us headaches and frustrations.
So, let’s play by the rules and have fun with foursquare. And, if you see somebody who is really ruining it for the foursquare community, shoot a tweet over to foursquare support, and they will investigate it. Lastly, I encourage your local foursquare community to band together to help reeducate some of these users and to monitor (and report) cheating activities when possible!
