Blog of Cheeky Geeky

Last week, Robert Scoble wrote a great post about “malleable social graphs” and more broadly about the many different possible uses of location-based services like FourSquare and Gowalla (and more broadly, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and other Web 2.0 sites taking advantage of geo-tagging).

 

This got me thinking about notions of “checking in” to a crime in progress - a brief update on what you’ve seen and when, possibly with a photo attached, and geo-tagged. Imagine how useful that would be if law enforcement officials were monitoring such things. (This is kind of what Microsoft Vine could be when it gets out of beta, but tha’ts another story altogether.)

 

You can use Web 2.0 tools any way you want - not just the way the majority of bloggers say you should. The old notion about how you shouldn’t tweet about what you eat for lunch is ridiculous - I’ve taken up cooking lately and I talk about what I made and what I’m eating, and people LOVE it.

 

So, in that vein, I’ve been using FourSquare in some interesting ways. One thing I’ve been doing is what I call “pre-boarding,” that is, checking into real places that definitely exist but are not open yet. I became the mayor of a new cafe opening in May today in my work neighborhood. It’s legit - I walked by it. And it benefits the community - Now when it opens, it’s already in the FourSquare system, and a social network has been jump-started. And it benefits the business - it’s free advertising on social networks.

 

I’ve started doing this around Washington, DC when I’m walking around. If there’s a new place clearly opening, I check into it and often will post on social networks. Why not?

 

What do you think - is pre-boarding cheating? Is it innovative? Is it useful?