dear lazyweb: please tell me about foursquare + twitter

[enth]

Apparently while I was on vacation half the damn world signed up for foursquare, a dodgeball-esque app from the creators of dodgeball. My understanding is somehow they use twitter to distribute checkins via SMS to avoid paying the SMS costs themselves. This is also the part I am unclear on, because it isn't explained anywhere on the site as far as

Comments

[girlstyle]

You have a variety of options once you sign up:

1. Have every update send a "Hey, I'm at XXX" tweet on your account, thusly pinging everyone who follows you as opposed to just Foursquare users
2. Have every update send a DM out to any of your Twitter friends who have Foursquare and have chosen to receive updates this way (the upside being, if you have DMs ping your phone, you get the Dodgeball-esque SMS)
3. Neither, but any of your Foursquare-using friends who elect to receive check-ins via email (like me) receive every update that way

I've started sending my check-ins as DMs, but prefer not to receive them this way as not all my Foursquare friends are my Twitter friends so I'm keeping email notifications but don't want duplicate notices.

Summary: Don't worry about making a new Twitter feed. If you don't want to spam your followers, just don't opt into the "tweet my check-ins" feature.

[girlstyle]

Oh, and it's a super sweet Dodgeball replacement. Like, ten times better than any other I've seen. It was built by some old Dodgeball devs so there's no learning curve whatsoever.

[enth]

Hmm. I'm fairly sure I want my updates to be available via SMS to folks who choose to receive them. Sounds like an alternate twitter account that posts updates in the main feed might be the winner. Downside, I suppose, is that anybody could stalk me via a public feed, but I kinda don't really care.

[girlstyle]

If you opt into Foursquare posting to your Twitter feed, there are no SMSs involved. It's just a tweet.

The way to get SMS pings going would be to allow Foursquare to send DMs, and those go ONLY to other Foursquare users who have opted in to the feature and NOT to your stream. No stalking, no extra accounts.

[chris]

yeah i'm running it to send only DMs to my foursquare friends. general consensus seems to agree that broadcasting your location to your general twitter feed all the time is annoying and I tend to agree. i wouldn't mind getting dms sent to txt but I just use the iphone app anyway.

I'm pretty sure they even just imported the dodgeball venue database wholesale, since there are a lot of closed & dupe venues (i.e. mirabeau room and spectator lounge). Deano's is still in there even.

[enth]

Yeah I'd never want that stuff in my main feed, and I'd rather not have it taking up a bunch of room in my DM outbox either. Hence the idea of an alternate account, though people would have to follow that to receive updates by SMS regardless of whether they were sent to that account's main feed or by DM. Not optimal :-/

SO

[asabass]

Foursquare is pretty fun. You've got the right idea about the direct messages thing, and if you're going to go that route I would recommend setting up a dedicated twitter account for it. Alternatively, several of my friends have set it up to email it to their phones directly (most providers give you the ability to set up an email address that converts the emails into an MMS message). You can configure Foursquare to send you emails when someone checks in. This skips twitter altogether, and seems like a great idea to me

Re: SO

[enth]

I really like the idea of getting updates via email and then pointing that function to my carrier's email-to-SMS gateway. Could be a winner for anybody who wanted SMS updates, honestly.

I understand where you're coming from with checking the website, but it's not something I would ever remember to do once I'd been disappointed by finding nothing a few times. I'd much rather have my phone buzz and remind me, oh hey, I don't need to be sitting around the house, I could go meet people at Cafe Presse or wherever instead.

Re: SO

[asabass]

Yeah, I think the email-to-SMS thing is the way to go.

[rollersluut]

I'm really happy with Foursquare as a Dodgeball replacement. I think the badges/achievements are a fun new element, even if I'm still not sure how all of that works and I don't think it's explained very well on their site. I've got my account set up to send and receive checkins via direct messages, and this works for me because I don't really like using direct messages for anything else (If I want to text with someone directly, I'll just text them directly). My only problem has been that it's been a little flaky for me. No one else seems to be having this problem, but I'll go several days where my checkins are not received by others and I'm not receiving checkins, and then magically it will start working again. I suspect this is a problem with Twitter, though, because I think I've been having trouble with regular direct messages, too

[xaotica]

It's Twitter. Follow @Twitter to get notified when they're having SMS problems.

[xaotica]

I like using my main Twitter acct cuz I like knowing who's getting an SMS about my locale