Healthy Conversations » Foursquare

What’s the deal with location based services? All hype or more hype needed?

Marta Marquez - Virgo Regulations guest blogger — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:00:14 +0000

With social media week well and truly underway all around the world, we thought it would be appropriate to explore recent social media technology which has really spilt opinion… location-based services (LBS). Not everyone is totally convinced by this new ‘check-in’ craze and it’s interesting that 31 per cent of people don’t even know what checking-in is. Is there any value to LBS or are we creating cool new technologies for the sake of it?

Facebook Places is now quite a commonly used feature and sometimes people wonder, what’s the point? But there are actually some really useful apps currently available such as those that can help you find your way when you’re lost or those that show you where the nearest cash point or toilet is within a one mile radius; Around Me, Addison Lee and Odeon to name but a few.

It’s safe to say that many companies are jumping on board the LBS love boat and incorporating this technology into their apps, but it’s particularly interesting to reflect on how this has been done in healthcare. Quite recently, as part of their fight against HIV, AIDS and STIs, MTV Staying Alive developed an app called iCondom, which in essence is a condom distribution map. The app allows users to upload information on where they can access condoms nearby. Handy!

Though not healthcare related, we’ve also stumbled across this new gaming app currently in development in the States called Foursquaropoly. It combines Foursquare (another well know LBS) and Monopoly by pulling information from Foursquare and giving players the ability to buy and sell properties as well as collect rent from other people who check into their properties. It’s definitely a pretty innovative way of bringing to life the whole ‘check-in thing’.

Many people don’t value LBS and, at the moment, it doesn’t seem that its real worth has been established in healthcare communications. We now live in a world where pretty much everything is striving towards being online, interactive and personalised to you. Maybe it’s time for healthcare to embrace the potential before we can genuinely evaluate its potential?

MTV reward you for STD check-ups shown on Foursquare

Ed Purkis — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:50:55 +0000

Earlier today, MTV announced that they will ‘reward’ people for having STD check-ups if they show they have done so on Foursquare. For those that hate jargon, this basically means that if you are signed up to the social network Foursquare, which tells other Foursquare users where you are through the GPS location of your smartphone, MTV will see that you have physically entered an STD clinic and congratulate you for doing so. The reward is a Foursquare badge, which is basically the digital equivalent of saying “I woz ‘ere”. The badge shows other users where you have been, and a desirable way to show you’re an active member of the community. While other brands besides MTV have been rewarding Foursquare users, this is the first highly promoted use of the social network for healthcare that we’re aware of. There are surely therefore other applications of the network worth giving some more thought in terms of healthcare…

The obvious one is to promote a cause to a community in the same way this MTV initiative aims to do. So if you wanted to tell people you had visited a great event related to healthcare, a Foursquare campaign could reward you for doing so. Pizza restaurants give you money off your next meal if you make it known that you have eaten at one of their restaurants on Foursquare. So in the same way, visiting a stand at an event such as the Vitality Show could trigger a reward of some kind, whether material or otherwise.

There are lots of obvious pitfalls with healthcare communications and privacy issues abound, but when it comes to developments affecting healthcare online, Foursquare is definitely one to watch. If every campaign and brand is only just now jumping on board Twitter and Facebook, Foursquare could very easily become the next ‘me too’. That is, if it isn’t happening already…?

Why privacy issues won’t put people off Facebook

Ed Purkis — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:18:12 +0000

The author of a report which features the personal details of 100 million Facebook users says he released the information to highlight the privacy issues associated with social networking. This has received widespread media pick-up because it is captivating, and a classic attention-grabbing scare story. But it is not the massive scandal it might appear to be. People who don’t want to share their personal lives online don’t. And people who are happy to be open about their information online aren’t going to stop using social networks just because of this report. Facebook scare stories are nothing new (as we said in a post not long ago). So is this a complete red herring? Should we care in the field of healthcare communications?

It’s important to keep an eye on trends like this for sure. The number of people who have signed up to Foursquare, in which your online friends can track your actual geographic location, is high enough to suggest people don’t care too much about privacy.

There is nothing to suggest people are going to stop using social media because some long forgotten (but reassuring) concept of privacy will all of a sudden return. Fears are often quickly calmed when the ‘reasons for’ come in, and the bottom line is that if people see the benefits of these systems and genuinely want to use them they will be willing to take a little bit of risk. It’s likely we’ll see more educated users of social networks, but if people are willing to share with trusted parties where they are on a map, they are going to be willing to share sensitive healthcare information if approached in a professional, trustworthy manner and there are clear benefits to be gained.