The Cheating Hipster (note the fancy moustache)

foursquare, heady with machismo having turned down a cool $100 million, just officially announced that its “cheater code” – an attempt to catch some of the folks that are checking in from their couches to steal mayorships.

For those who don’t know, foursquare is a free service that allows users to “check in” at businesses for points.  The points carry no monetary value, cannot be exchanged for any goods or services, have no brand cachet, and will not inspire anyone you know with any sense of envy or awe.  They’re just arbitrary points.

If you check in at a place more often than anyone else, you become the “Mayor” of that place.  “Mayor” is not a political office and carries no legal authority with it.  No privileges are conferred on the Mayor and the Mayor draws no salary.  The Mayor is not entitled to any special benefits or discounts by virtue of being the foursquare Mayor of a place.

Being a foursquare Mayor imbues one with no additional powers, abilities, or responsibilities.  As with points, the office of foursquare Mayor carries no monetary value, cannot be exchanged for any goods or services, have no brand cachet, and will not inspire anyone you know with any sense of envy or awe.

If you cheat at foursquare, you are a moron.  If you know of anyone who cheats at foursquare, please advise them of their moronitude and tell them to stop.  Cheating at foursquare is just plain sad.

• 8 Things Stalkers, Burglars and Psycho Ex’s Love about Social Media
• Please Rob Me – Location Based Social Networking Burglary 
• Now We Need to be Afraid to Use Geolocation Services????

However, one very valid benefit to businesses is to know who comes to your place of business and how frequently.  Up until now, this wasn’t an option for business owners.

Foursquare plans to distribute a free analytics tool and dashboard in the coming weeks that will give business owners access to a range of information and statistics about their business visitors.

Tristan Walker, director of business development at Foursquare, said that the latest features were intended to help local merchants run their stores by giving them more information about their customers.

“We’re trying to give businesses more retention with current customers and the ability to add new customers with specials,” said Mr. Walker.

With the new tool, businesses will be able to see a range of real-time data about Foursquare usage, including who has “checked in” to the place via Foursquare, when they arrived, the male-to-female customer ratio and which times of day are more active for certain customers. Business owners will also be able to offer instant promotions to try to engage new customers and keep current ones.

“If a restaurant can see one of its loyal customers has dropped off the map and is no longer checking in, the owner could offer them incentives to come back,” said Mr. Walker.

This is a great way for local businesses to take advantage of web 2.0 information on their clientèle, allowing them to offer strategic offers. With the influx of mobile smartphones, this is surely something to keep an eye on.

[Via NYT]

1. Burglars will just have to monitor your patterns, figure out your routine and come rob you! It’s brilliant!! Foursquare is a perfect tool for this. The Foursquare service allows you to check into random places, get badges and become the “mayor” of the area. Sure the tool is awesome, but it helps you tell us where you are ALL OF THE TIME… If we know WHERE you are… and if we know where you AREN’T… and that is home.

2. Stalkers love it because they can go coincidentally “meet-up” and spontaneously hang out where you are located. Maybe if they are lucky, while they are there, they can get a lock of your hair or something.



"She's got a great personality... "

3. OMG STALKEO!! Oops. I meant Spokeo. They are a great tool for stalkers and psychos. Check out this. If your stalker goes to this site, they can pay $3-$5 dollars and as long as the stalker has your email address, STALKEO will scour 43 social media network sites and collect all information associated with each email address. Blog entries, Linked In profiles, Flickr photostreams, Twitter tweets, Digg comments, your Friend Feed, Amazon wish lists – and a whole lot more – all on one tidy little Web page. And every time they add new content, Spokeo lets you know.

4. Stalkers and Psycho Ex’s love Facebook’s new privacy settings. Apparently, Facebook has Twitter-envy and wants to have real-time searchable statuses and be up to date and open!! Woo hoo!

5. Not so fast, Facebook, you dastardly doer. You’ve now empowered kidnappers! Unknowing targets of stalkeration will now have public images of them, their family, friends and potentially pictures of their children. Now, ne’er-do-wells can easily target which kids they need to give candy to outside the white van during recess.

6. Stalkers and Psychos like to set up false Social Media profiles and pretend to be you. They can totally assume your online identity and spread falsities about you, your family, your business, etc.

7. Psycho Ex’s like social media because you tell us when you are single, in a relationship, married or “it’s complicated”. Well, when the jealous ex sees you found someone new… they can use additional tools like STALKEO to find out information about the new love of your life… and where to go to “randomly” meet up for an epic psycho-ex / new-love duel to death in the octagon of retardation.

8. Psycho Ex’s, Stalker and random people LOVE LOVE LOVE Facebook’s info tab on the profile of all their friends. A vast majority of people have their job listed, their phone number, cell phone, e-mail address, screen name, campus post-office box and 153 pictures of her with friends and a her fucking boyfriend. Oh, sorry… got carried away. LMAO

9. Stalkers, Psycho Ex’s and heavy breathers on the phone like that with the Android OS, you can export your facebook friends phonenumbers to a folder on your phone where you can access any of your friends that have provided this information. This includes all of the people who you have never met and really have no earthly clue who this person is.

As you can see, there are many reasons to be careful with your information online. You never know WHO might stumble across your twitter profile, get connected on LinkedIn and Facebook… follow you on Foursquare and then try awful, awful things. There are a lot of idiotic, immature selfish people out there and so it is wise to protect yourself in whatever manner you can.

This article was written tongue-in-cheek, but this is why I never update my social media status on where I am, when I go out of town to conferences or vacation or on social media “check-in” sites like FourSquare or Gowalla. I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry.

The sad thing is, is there are probably many other ways that these idiots can use social media for. Use the comments below to enlighten us.

Wait, I promised you 8 things that stalkers, burglars and psycho ex’s love, but I gave you 9! I lied to you, does this surprise you? Mwh ah ahah ah aha. *cough.