Have you seen Foursquare Spam yet?
I think I have.
It’s not pretty and could add noise to what has been shown to be a reliable and pure signal of consumer recommendations.
Today I was checking out the feedback section of the GoodEatsFor.Me dashboard of Myers + Chang (another one of my favorite restaurants in the South End ).
In perusing the overall feedback for the restaurant I noticed that one of these things is not like the others. (Hint: It’s in the middle and is a Foursquare tip).
GoodEatsFor.Me ends up grabbing all mentions of Myers+Chang across Twitter as well as all the Foursquare check-in and tip activity for the restaurant. We aggregate this content and analyze it to identify consumer recommendations and overall trends.
What you see above is a Foursquare tip left by Etiquette Realty (most probably by Josh) on the Myers + Chang Foursquare profile. The screenshot is from GoodEatsFor.Me but if you go to the Foursquare profile for the restaurant you can see the original tip.
Some people might claim that this ‘tip’ is actually a good piece of advertising.
I think it is a new variation on an old problem: Spam
My main problem is that it provides no real value to the consumer who would normally look to this tip section. Beyond that, it is contrived - if Etiquette Realty was a fan of Myers + Chang and left a real tip or recommendation in addition to pitching their business it might be a BIT more palatable.
That being said, it seems that Etiquette Reality has been busy as of late - there are 12 almost identical tips posted by them over the past 4 days. Here’s a screenshot from Foursquare of the last 3 to-do’s.
I’m not picking on Etiquette Realty. They’re the only offender that I’ve come across personally.
Martin Bryant wrote a piece last month on thenextweb.com entitled, “Why Foursquare Is At Risk Of A Spam Epidemic”. He highlights another spam example in a Foursquare tip.
Check the Tips at a number of popular locations around the city and you’ll find advice like this one at a railway station:
“Please do not leave parcels or packages unattended. Use a service to send them like www.myparceldelivery.com otherwise they will be severly (sic) dealt with by the security services.”
At least in this example, the tip talks about parcels and packages at a railway station. This is a little more topical given the location to which this tip is appended. Still spammy though
If anything this trend will continue. I wonder how Foursquare will deal with this problem. Perhaps they will create two classes of tips: one about the venues on Foursquare and another about the surrounding neighborhood? Or perhaps they will ask users to flag offending tips. The perils of UGC!
Thankfully I can easily block this type of noise from the GoodEatsFor.Me dashboard - Foursquare users don’t have that luxury…yet.
