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Comment by rfnslyr | Hacker News Reader

I've literally never heard of foursquare in real life. Nobody I know uses it or has used it.

Do you live in an urban area? Foursquare has been commonly talked about by the non-tech-savvy people I know for years now. I'd actually say moreso than any social service other than Twitter and Facebook, over the past 3-4 years.

I don't know many people who check in, but if they do, they do it on facebook or instagram or twitter. The people I'm referring to our college kids or people living in SF or LA.

I live in downtown Toronto. I really don't know anyone who uses it.

I'm a 20 year old attending college in NYC. FourSquare is considered a running joke, like LinkedIn.

When you graduate, there's a possibility that LinkedIn may not still be considered a joke, for better or worse.

wait until you get out of college, and start looking for a job, LinkedIn will have the last laugh.

I'm 27 and killed my LinkedIn account because 1) I just don't find them to be a company that is concerned with user privacy and 2) I have not once seen a benefit to being on it.

I think it probably depends on your industry. I'm a programmer, so maybe if you're a finance major it's more useful.

I live in Portland, OR and don't know a single person that uses it.

I think my wife uses Foursquare out of a something like digital nostalgia, b/c she and all her friends were in their 20s in NYC when it was cool.

I use it almost daily, as well. I check in to places because it syncs with TimeHop and keeps a record of places I've been, which is useful to me. And the explore function is much better at finding places that I'll actually enjoy when I'm in neighborhoods and cities that I'm not usually in.

One of the most useful apps on my phone, honestly.

Been using it for years with no intention of stopping. Me and my friends use it as a way to track all the places we've been to and places we like. So when I'm back in a city I've been to I can look at my history and recall a place I liked and go to it again. Or if someone is going to a place I've traveled to, I create a list of the places I liked and share it with them. I wish it was easier to do these use cases in the app. Mining my own history and surfacing that content would be very interesting and useful to me, especially if I can share it and have others shared with me. The tips are also far more helpful to me than the foodie-wannabe Yelp reviews for the same venues.

Totally agree. It's really helpful, and rewards continued usage.

I don't either, but perhaps I'm too old (30). I imagine it's mostly used by people who spend far too much time on Twitter and FB and feel the need to be the center of their own little social black hole.

OK. I use it every day, as do a handful of my friends. I have a few other friends who only use it when they want to be sure everyone knows they're on a beach.

So, I mean, it does get used by regular people.

Remember BrightKite? Same category.

Everyone I know uses yelp.

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