Much ado has been made in the last couple of days about Please Rob Me, a new site that reposts public Foursquare check-in tweets as tongue-in-cheek “new opportunities” for burglars to break in to homes while their owners are out. It’s a unique and fun way to spread awareness of the fact that announcing where you are also effectively announces where you are not.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took a lot of heat last month when he said that the social norm has evolved over time to the point where people have gotten more comfortable sharing their information openly and with more people. But in his defense, Foursquare passed the one million daily check-ins mark a few weeks ago. MyTown has over a million users. Yelp has recently added a check-in element to its mobile app. Sharing personal information with the world is a core element of those services, and they resonate strongly with a significant user base.
Maybe early adopters were driven by a mildly exhibitionist nature or the desire for another excuse to play with their new smartphone. But there’s no doubt that location awareness is here to stay, because it has tremendous potential applications for users who want to forge a connection to the places that they frequent, and vice-versa. Some businesses are offering deals to check-ins and Foursquare mayors, while others are experimenting with using location-aware services as loyalty programs. And that’s only the beginning.
So there is value there, if the right balance can be struck between value and privacy. Brands and service providers have to be careful not to overreach. We have to err on the side of caution when it comes to the personal information that their customers and users have entrusted them with. The clumsy launch of Google Buzz should be a lesson to all of us in the social media biz about how quickly goodwill can be lost if we don’t think things through carefully.
At the same time, users need to evolve a new set of common-sense behaviors. But that’s nothing new. Almost every emerging technology that’s designed to make our lives easier comes with its own unique caveats. When ATM cards first hit the scene, people had to be warned not to keep their PIN numbers in their wallets. Despite years of constant warnings, people still open email attachments from people they don’t know. And someone out there is giving their bank information to an exiled Nigerian prince.
There’s a learning curve to all of this stuff, and sometimes it takes a few worst-case scenarios to wake people up. Hopefully a tweet from Please Rob Me will gently smarten a few folks up and spare them some grief.
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