Stars and how to be cyberstalked on Foursquare...the old debate about privacy or exposure

UK-led international team of astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one which at birth had more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, with the name of R136a, frankly not a very attractive name considering we are talking about the largest piece of something existing in the universe as we know it so far.

Almost at the same time, I made another discovery almost as important as that, at least in this side of the universe: It is in this article in The Guardian about how easily you can be cyberstalked on Foursquare...scary!? For those who are not familiar with this social network, Foursquare allows you to "check in" in every place you go in your city, and getting some discounts by checking in hence visiting certain places, generally restaurants, cafes or bars. The thing is that the social network is made to let your friends know where you are and let you know where they are as well, but...what happens when you also have among your so called friends people who aren't, or are just acquintances? The writer of the article, Shea Sylvia, a frequent blogger and twitter user explains how she received a misterious call when she was in a restaurant from someone called Brian, who resulted to be also at that moment in that restaurant. of course Shea was scared to death and Brian never showed up, but that made her realized how expose we all are (me included, it's just that i don't have stalkers so far...) but actually...do we care?

We all have probably be involved in esterile debates about privacy admitting how easy is for anyone to know about you and how dangerous it is, but, are we restricting our comments on Facebook yelling we are here or there? The answer is no. Maybe we all need a stalker at a certain point to change some habits, but even with that, and as Shea says, in the long term we are not going to change our level of involvement in on-line communities whatsoever!

However, i would like to respectfully recommend Shea -and to you too dear readers- to think it twice when you click on "accept as a friend", at the end it is in your hands to open your data to whoever you want, it's needless to say that privacy options on Facebook are there for a reason and if you guys don't use them is because you just don't care...!

This is a song's blog, and these are today's picks: Miranda! is an Argentinian band almost unknown in Spain but very succesful across the ocean, and "Enamorada" with a very catchy melody that keeps lingers in my head and just pops out of it from time to time. Yo La Tengo's Autumn Sweater is (or should be) a classic of 20th century (of course i am biased, specially since i saw them again live in Madrid a few months ago for the second time 12 years after the first time - in the FIB 1998-)

Foursquare, what is it? How is its business model?

Foursquare is a(nother) social network based on the location of the user which allows you to register in different places such as museums, restaurants, bars, etc...so your friends, acquaintances or followers can know where you are and which are your preferred places. Using Foursquare in your Blackberry or i-Phone allows you know at any time a large number of entertainment options near your location, and be able to know about these options through other's tips. It is not the first one, actually Brightkite has this honor, combining location sharing and friends' connection.

For a more accurate definition, this is what the webpage of Foursquare says: Foursquare is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. We aim to build things to not only help you keep up with the places your friends go, but that encourage you to discover new places and challenge you to explore your neighborhood in new ways"

As every social network, you only start benefiting from its features once you dive deeper into it and become a relatively frequent user.

When this application become really useful -and potentially addictive- is when it's downloaded to your Blackberry or i-phone and the updates of your preferred places can be done in real time. Features like the "mayor" (you get points according to the number of times you visit a certain place, becoming a "mayor" of the place) are definitely useful tools to make it more and more essential for the night-lovers, gourmets, music, theater and cinema fans...and in general everyone who likes to enjoy the amazing entertainment offer that a city like Madrid (in this case) has everyday.

The business model

Foursquare is conceived, from the business point of view, to understand and recognize the customers' preferences in what regards to their entertainment. This information is provided to the managers of the business (restaurants, cafes, etc) so they can understand the needs of the end-user and keep their attention based on offers, discounts through coupons or special promotions, in order to gain loyalty from their clients or reach to new clients. As you can see in Mashable, there are several ways where Foursquare can benefit retailers, Hoteliers, Tourist offices and of course their users. The idea is to make the client feel special by using these tool, accesing to extra features: Wynn and Encore hotels in Las Vegas offers to Foursquare clients enjoy a glass of champagne at the luxurious Blush Boutique nightclub.

Rodolfo Carpintier Santana describes it in his blog the new social networks business' models such as Foursquare as the business of geolocalization, and Enrique Dans in his blog is foreseeing the exponential increasing levels of acceptance this tool is achieving based on a game-like component in order to complement its social and funtional features.

The use of Foursquare in Spain - other alternatives.

For the spanish readers, most of you probably don't know about Foursquare (i actually did only two weeks ago, although i have to admit that i have become a frequent user nowadays!) but you may have heard about Tooio, (pronounced "tuyo" which means "yours" in English) an alternative to Foursquare for spanish users, run in association with Idealista, one of the most respected webs in Real Estate searching in Spain. You can know more about Tooio here.

As this blog is about music although it will be used from time to time to submit my Information Systems' assignments, I am not going to disappoint my readers and here are today's selected songs (let's go Japanese today...) one of them is protected by BMG - Ariola so I can't get the embed code, however here's the link: Mecano - Japón (1984)