Hold on to your Badges: 4square is Down!

Graph depicting smartphone market share in Q2 2009

I've been meddling around with 4Square, but I don't have a smartphone so its not particularly easy.

I REALLY am missing the boat on this one. I mean, I get it. If you live in a place with higher carry rate of smart phones and people who have that BURNING need to check in, it makes a world of sense.

Beyond having GPS tracking on your customers, does it get better?

I spoke about the problem of 4Square the other day and the lack of smartphones that makes it easy to participate, but when you have systematic failures like the ones it has experienced over the past few days, it gives you pause about using it.

Twitter has a checkered pass with its reliability, yet, its not going to leave us any time in the near future. Neither will 4square. Why?

It's FREE. ALL MARKETING IS FUNDAMENTALLY UNRELIABLE. I won't regurgitate the famous Wanamaker quote. But one of the tradeoffs that people like about the free mechanism of social media versus its unreliability is that it does illustrate which half works.

I still am not all that keen on using 4square. I have little use to be Mayor of Waffle House. I'm not in an area that embraces social media deals or advertising, but I can see why it works where it does and why eventually most people MIGHT have to actually use it or address it.

Until then, I'll pine for a jetsetter badge.

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Check out my appearance on the The Toddcast Podcast

Click and watch the podcast recording of my appearance on the Toddcast Podcast Such a fun time!

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Most folk who know me, know I lost my father when I was 14 years old. However, before he passed, he shared a timeless secret with me—a practice that would shape my life in ways I could never have imagined. He didn't teach me meditation in the traditional sense, with incense and crossed legs. Instead, he showed me how to meditate by gazing at a lone light on the ceiling. When I was very young, I had night terrors that would wake me in the middle of the night. I'm sure it was terribly frustrating to calm a child from that. But my father had the way. I never understood how he came to the practice. But over the years, I've come to understand that my father's unique approach to meditation was, in fact, a profound lesson in mindfulness and presence. In a nearly pitch black room, he would tell me to find a speck of light, not unlike a star. Then focus. He would say, "Just watch the light, like you're watching a story unfold. Be the observer, not the thinker." I

Todd Lyden

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