AMES—
You know Frank Cownie as the mayor of Des Moines. Cyclone fans are getting re-aquainted with "The Mayor," ISU Head Basketball Coach Fred Hoiberg. But you probably didn't know that Ed Moran is a mayor, in his own right. "Well, of course, Ames Racquet and Fitness (Center), I'm the Mayor of."No, he didn't run and get elected. Moran's title is electronic. Moran's iPhone has an application called Foursquare. He uses it to "check-in" at the places where he shows up each day. They are physical places around Central Iowa where other people who use Foursquare also check-in. Moran said, "It is actually kind of very addicting. It's a competition with other people from your Twitter or from your Facebook."
The competition is to see who shows up at a specific place most often. By checking in, users earn points for virtual badges and, in Moran's case, the title of "mayor" for being there the most. His domain extends from the fitness club to the coffee shop, to the pizza joint on Main Street. "Yeah. Great Plains Pizza," he said. I think I'm, like, mayor of 23 (places). I was mayor of where I get my hair cut at, but I was just ousted."
You may be wondering, besides the title, what's in it for Moran? He said, "There are businesses that give you discounted drinks or, you know, discounted food." But some people see past the benefits of Foursquare to the potential danger. "When I signed up (for Twitter), I was pretty naive," said Leslie Berg. Berg is a single mom who, like Moran, jumped on the social media bandwagon. Certain apps may have been designed for business marketing, but Berg discovered they can be abused. She said, "As a single woman, I kind of opened myself up to dangerous situations, or if somebody had bad intentions, they would know where to find me."
Berg has never used Foursquare, but she had a bad experience with Twitter. The two applications go hand-in-hand. Foursquare posts can use Twitter to tell people where you are. Berg explained, "There was a guy who kept showing up at different places that I would post that I was gonna be at with friends, and at first it was like a coincidence, but then it became like more of a habit (for him to show up there)." Berg said that when she finally confronted the man, she mustered up the courage to ask him if he was following her. "And he said, 'You posted on Twitter that you were going to be here.' And so I was like, 'Oh, okay.' And so (the consequences of what I had posted) clicked in my head."
Dr. Michael Bugeja calls Foursquare a "marketing device that appeals to the ego and betrays your privacy." Dr. Bugeja is a social media expert and author. He is also the director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. Begeja said Facebook and similar applications have always held the power to broadcast your whereabouts, but people continue to ignore it. He said, "Terms of service can change overnight, and (the websites' administrators) can divulge things about you that you may not want other people to know."
Bugeja said the problems are always lurking, feeding off people's need to feel like other people care (about what the user posts). He added, "If you have a difficult relationship like say, with a stalker, you might not wanna be using Foursquare. These things, however, seem divorced from the hype that we embrace... that we'll have more friends... that people really want to know that we're the mayor of a cafe and have a free cup of coffee. Who the heck cares!?"
Moran does. He said it's fun. He said it keeps him occupied and, so far, he's had no trouble. Moran said Foursquare is useful, in that users can track where you've been in the past. That enables people to keep tabs on their spending habits. Like Facebook and Twitter before it, Berg said Foursquare requires caution. She advised, "Don't put (your personal information) out there. Or (if you do), be careful of how you word it." The Des Moines Police Deptartment's computer crimes expert suggests people change all of their settings to "private." That way, they can filter who can and cannot see what they post.
