Abstract

With over 3 million users to date, Foursquare represents the most popular of a developing trend in integrating Global Positioning System technology and social networking platforms. The use of location based services raises fundamental questions about the nature of privacy and self-disclosure in the field of new media, especially following the decisions of Facebook and Twitter to integrate GPS tagging into their interfaces, and with the increase of web access using mobile phones. This paper will summarise the findings of 20 email interviews with users of Foursquare, assessing 3 key research questions that concern the relationship between the user and the physical space as mediated by technology, the relationship between the user and the technology itself and the relationship between the user and the interface. These research questions were used to assess the suitability of a phenomenological model for describing and predicting the emergence of a new world view on the part of users from use of the software – the paper will consider this in light of the findings with reference to McLuhan, Heidegger and Latour. Finally, I consider how location has become an assemblage of user, technology and interface rather than a representation of position in physical space