Less-savvy/non user:
Medium-savvy user:
* Location-based services: which ones, when, why (advantages)?
Uses three services: Foursquare, Google Latitude and Facebook Place (checkin). Frequency: once a month.t to sign up for third-party offers without knowing who the third-parties were.
1. Foursquare: it’s more like a game. Uses it for badges in unusual places. E.g., to get frequent flyer miles at airports and Subway discounts. To share and view badge information with friends.
2. Latitude: To keep track of family members’ locations.
3. Facebook Place (checkin): Does not use the service as frequently as the other services.
* Disadvantages of those services?
1. Foursquare: If a person become a mayor, he/she is congratulated on that privilege. However, if someone else becomes a mayor and the original person is kicked out, a statement saying that the new mayor ousted the old mayor is made public on the Twitter timeline.
2. Latitude: It does not refresh the location data automatically. Anecdote: his wife was traveling by bus to a hospital and he drove from work to meet her there. They were unable to see the other’s exact location without continuously hitting refresh while traveling. You also can’t see fine grained location details.
3. Facebook: Disliked the Facebook privacy glitch that happened when Timeline was initially introduced. He explicitly created a setting whereby one friend would not be able to view any of his posts nor be able to post on his wall. However, after Timeline was introduced, when he used the “view as” feature in his profile edit page, he noticed that that friend was able to see all his posts!
* Categorization scheme. Advantages/disadvantages?
1. Foursquare: no categories
2. Facebook Place (checkin): Role-based access control. Categories include family, high school, undergrad, grad school, 1st employer and current employer.
3. Latitude: have only family members on it.
Advantages: He likes the role-based categorization for its simplicity and ease of creation, maintenance and remembrance.
* Do you block any friends? Who do you subscribe to? Any particular data that you are interested in? Any particular group of people whose content you are interested in? Any particular information you wouldn’t all your friends to know about?
He blocks two types of posts from friends: those that play a lot of games on Facebook and publish their progress continuously, and those that frequently update their Facebook profile with nonsensical statuses (too much information or very personal information). Does not subscribe to anyone outside his friends list on Facebook, but does follow people on Twitter. He’s interested in content related to his field or hobbies. Interested in receiving content from his family members. He wouldn’t want to share personal information with acquaintances.
* What type of information are you comfortable sharing with businesses?
Wouldn’t mind sharing aggregate information. But wouldn’t want to sign up for third-party offers without knowing who the third-parties were.
Anecdote 1: He uses Runkeeper to keep track of his preparation for half-marathons. However, he does not want to share it with all friends (or any business) since they would know where he lived and worked. Sharing information that he is at a gas station would be alright or that he arrived there from a local interstate (e.g.: I-95) would be alright. However, if he had to say which neighborhood of the specific county he was travelling from, he would not be interested in participating in such an offer.
Anecdote 2: He discovered that his coworkers were receiving Costco coupons via mail but he wasn’t. He went and spoke with the manager, who informed him that he was not receiving any coupons because when he applied for the membership, he checked the box which did not allow Costco to share his data with third parties. Therefore, since Costco only offers offers from third-parties (unlike Target, which has its own internal recommendation system), he did not receive any coupons.
* Do you use Groupon offers?
Yes but realized that he did not need it. stopped checking because it was sending cooking classes, dancing lessons etc. However, it was guaranteed to give an offer, compared to Foursquare which would give an offer based on some conditions. Would like to exchange location information in exchange for coupons but would want an intelligent app (not ads for what he’s not interested in).
* Any efficiency concerns?
He used Foursquare and Latitude since 2009 and is tired of using them as he does not see any personal benefit to him. He is concerned with how much personal information he has to share. He also mentioned that Groupon gives him offers that he could never use such as a cooking class, pedicure, etc. He would use Groupon only if it gathered some basic information about him and then provided him with appropriate offers.
* Features you would like to see?
1. For information publishing, he would like to be able to determine which friends get placed in each category. Would prefer to have a service that automatically shares information but notifies him and asks for his approval.
2. For information viewing, he would like an app that would automatically learn from his behaviour without him having to tell it what it should do at each stage.
3. Third-party.
Very-savvy user:
The user uses the facebook check-in function almost once a day.
Q: Do you like sharing your location information with others? If yes, why?
A: Yes, I like it. The first reason is that it can help me summarize my daily schedule, and let me review the places I have been to and the friends I have met. The second reason is that by sharing this information with friends, we (my friends and I) can exchange our feelings about the places, or the restaurants. Or, I can let other friends I am not familiar with know my interests and the kinds of restaurants that I like.
Q: Is there any particular data you don’t want other users to see?
A: I am not afraid of letting my friends view my check-in information. However, since my mom is one of my fb friends, in some cases, I would ask my friends not to tag me (in the check-ins). But most of the time, I don’t care about people seeing my activity information.
Q: What features would you like to see?
A: I wish they can provide a way to categorize my check-ins. For example, if I check-in in a restaurant, it can categorize it into the “gathering” group, or I can create personalized categories on my own, for example, if the check-in is related to “college friends gathering” or “family activities.”
Q: How about contextual categorizing friends?
A: It sounds pretty good. But I don’t want it to “automatically” publish it, the reason is that check-in is not just about yourself – sometimes the funny part of check-in is that you can tag “the person with you.” It is still not perfect if you augment that information afterwards (after you publish the check-in status) since other friends who saw the check-in at the first moment wouldn’t review that information later, and thus missing some information. Besides, the most important part is that maybe I don’t want those people to see my check-in. For example, I go to the NBA store, but I really don’t want my basketball friends to know it because I am afraid they would blame me on going there alone.
Q: Do you use groupon?
A: Yes, I have used it before. But I found it is quite annoying since it sends lots of emails every day.
Q: Would you like the service that exchanges your location information with coupons?
A: Yeah, it would be really cool. I have seen some stores having this kind of offers. They would give you discount if you check-in in the store. If they do provide this service, I’d be happy to share.
Q: Are you blocking any your friends’ feeds? Are you subscribing your friends’ feeds? What types of posts do you find interesting? Do you find posts of a particular group (interest-based of role-based) of people more interesting than others?
A: I only block the ads from games, I don’t block a specific person, and I don’t subscribe to any. In terms of how funny are the feeds, it doesn’t directly related to whether we share the same interests or how intimate we are, it depends on what types of stuff they are sharing. If I need do choose between interests-based friends or role-based friends, I’d say interests-based would be better because they have a higher probability to post things more interesting to me.