While on my way to Minneapolis on Monday I remembered to check in to La Guardia on the foursquare app on my iPhone. What I expected was one listing for LGA but I soon found that there several user-created hyper-specific locations – even a specific gate (D6). Here was another example of the users taking the application developed by the creators and using it in a manner they weren’t expecting.
My guess is that people are either using the service to help colleagues and friends know that they are already at the gate and waiting for them; or that we’re keen to discover new people sat around us. It can’t be too long before there’s an interaction between strangers in places like this just based on the info foursquare provides them. After our Good Ideas Salon in Brooklyn last week I went to a restaurant and found a number of people I didn’t know listed by the application. Right now there’s not a swift way to quickly find out whether these people are likeminds and could be approached but with the open API now being worked on by outside developers a level of hyper-local connectivity between strangers might start taking place.
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