Sure, they got us all to talk about the lovely site they've built, but I'm not entirely convinced of the premise. Indeed, there are criminals that would take the time to stake out someone's house just by checking up on their Foursquare check-ins, but for the vast majority of folks, I'm not buying it.
We had our car stolen out of the driveway one day after my mom was warming it up in the morning (I'm hearing this is illegal in places like Maryland). She doesn't do this every morning, BTW. What was interesting, though, is that the criminals weren't even smart enough to steal a car that had a full tank of gas. My parents later ran into them (fate is awesome) pushing that car into a gas station not too far from our house after it ran out of gas. I doubt these guys would have been smart enough to case our house based on my Foursquare check-ins. That morning, they were just walking through the neighborhood and saw an opp.
Furthermore, I think the site is also rather silly because it presupposes that everyone knows what Foursquare (or any of the other location-based check-in sites) is enough to make check-in data particularly useful. Contrary to popular belief, there is a whole contingent of people out there who have no clue about Twitter, Foursquare, TechCrunch or anything else we hold dear. :)
Finally, I have a tendency to check in on FS as I'm leaving a location, so I get the points, but I'm already rolling out of the parking lot and back to my house by the time the world knows where I've been.
We had our car stolen out of the driveway one day after my mom was warming it up in the morning (I'm hearing this is illegal in places like Maryland). She doesn't do this every morning, BTW. What was interesting, though, is that the criminals weren't even smart enough to steal a car that had a full tank of gas. My parents later ran into them (fate is awesome) pushing that car into a gas station not too far from our house after it ran out of gas. I doubt these guys would have been smart enough to case our house based on my Foursquare check-ins. That morning, they were just walking through the neighborhood and saw an opp.
Furthermore, I think the site is also rather silly because it presupposes that everyone knows what Foursquare (or any of the other location-based check-in sites) is enough to make check-in data particularly useful. Contrary to popular belief, there is a whole contingent of people out there who have no clue about Twitter, Foursquare, TechCrunch or anything else we hold dear. :)
Finally, I have a tendency to check in on FS as I'm leaving a location, so I get the points, but I'm already rolling out of the parking lot and back to my house by the time the world knows where I've been.