vbbeachbum:

“My good friend and neighbor had his foursquare mayorships revoked last week. He is a retired, life-long New Yorker whose wife passed away three years ago, and shortly afterwards lost his faithful companion, his dog. This led to my friend’s self-imposed seclusion in his UWS apartment for almost two years. 

Last year he bought his first smartphone. I would meet him most morning in the park at the Museum of Natural History, where he played his mandola for the local kids, in the company of their nannies, on warmer days. I introduced him to a number of apps last summer, and he quickly installed foresquare, facebook, AccuWeather, SCVNGR and other useful apps. 

Slowly he started to come out of his apartment more frequently. His favorite thing to do was to take walks in Central Park and track his walks on SCVNGR and show his friends where he had been that day. He has a lot of friends in the neighborhood. 

When he discovered foresquare his energy and spirit took off. Every day he would search for long-lost points of interest throughout Central Park, Riverside Park and the UWS side. His walks became more frequent. 6 miles in the morning and 4 miles in the afternoon. He started lossing weight. He would meet friends as far north as Grants Tomb, and using foresquare would rendezvous with friends and neighbors walking their dogs at various points in Central Park. 

Over the last number of months he built up over 200 majorships on foursquared, 99.9% of them statues, monuments, historic sites and many of the archways, bridges (36 - no two of which are alike) and gates (20 each named for various associations) in Central Park. Following my friend on foursquare, as many others do, provided a history of New York long forgotten by its residents. It also allow us to know where he was at anytime to make sure he was OK.

Last week he received the following notice from foursquare:

“We noticed that you seem to really love foursquare (good!), but our system has detected that your check-ins don’t follow our guidelines (bad!). Foursquare is meant for checking in to real places where you’re spending time, not for unfairly earning mayorships at businesses that you are not actually patronizing. Fake check-ins and tips ruin the experience for others, and it is our priority to make sure foursquare is fun and fair for our over 15 million users. 

Our system has detected that you earned your mayorships unfairly, and so we have revoked them.”

There are a few obvious errors in foursquare’s notice. Almost none of my friends mayorships are business. He really spend his time, searching for and enjoying the sites he discovered in the neighborhood. There was not a single fake check-in. foursquare did provide for endless hours of fun for my friend, as well as provided a valuable history lesson for all of his friends. But alas no more.

He has stopped using foursquare and has retreated to the seclusion of his apartment. Do the right thing foursquare. Give him back his mayorships (I don’t think there was much competition for the mayorships he had amassed). Give hom a teeshirt, recognizing him as one of your most frequent user and best representative for the social benefit foursquare can provide, that is if you care about that.
Sincerely,
Pat”