Footfeed – One Site for All Your Check-ins

If you're like me, you probably have at least 2-3 geolocation service apps, like Brightkite, Foursquare or Gowalla, on your smartphone. It can be quite time consuming when it comes to using all of them when out and about. My husband always laughs at me because I have to take 5-6 minutes just to check-in at each one.

Like Checkin Mania, a site I covered earlier this year, Footfeed is another site that aims to make your life easier when it comes to sharing your location on the web. Footfeed lets you check into all of your services at once, as well as earn multiple rewards (points, badges, mayorship, etc). "Footfeed integrates APIs from Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook, Twitter, Google Latitude and soon Whrrl."

Getting Started

After creating and verifying your account, it's time to start connecting your geolocation accounts. When registering, you can choose to connect your Facebook account during that initial step, or wait until now. Adding each account is painless, and best of all you don't have to supply any of your login credentials. You're directed to each site (Foursquare, Brightkite, Gowalla, etc) in order to grant Footfeed permission to access these accounts.

View Your Timeline

Once you're done connecting your geolocation accounts, Footfeed imports all of your friends, check-ins and data from each site. You're then directed to a combined timeline that can be sorted by service. Clicking on a username will take you to that person's profile on the original service, while clicking on their location will take you to a location page within Footfeed.

Location Page

Here you can see information about a specific location that a user has checked into. Of course there is a map of the location - as expected. You can see how many times you have checked into that location, how many people have visited the page and how many people (total) have checked into that location. There is also a combined timeline showing who has checked in that location and via which site. The timeline can be sorted by service just like your own account timeline.

Feeds & Stats

Now back to your account page; the left sidebar has information about you such as your latest check-in, number of check-ins via each service, number of badges, number of photos shared, number of notes posted, etc. Clicking on the "All Activity History" link will show a timeline with just all of your check-ins. So if you're curious about your past whereabouts, this is a great place to feed your curiosity.

Auto Posting

You may also want to click on your name in the upper right corner of the page to go to your settings. Here you choose which services to have Footfeed automatically post to when you check-in. By default, each site is set to not post. You will probably want to enable most if not all of them, so that your sites will be updated whenever you check-in via the Footfeed app.

You can also choose whether or not to have your services post to Facebook. Since you probably already have Facebook connected directly to each individual service, it's probably not a good idea to enable this. Of course, the choice is yours - just be aware that double posting may occur.

Mobile App

It's seems that Footfeed only has an iPhone/iPod Touch app at the moment. I'm surprised that they don't at least have a mobile website. This could be a huge mistake for them, since more people are now using other smartphones more than the iPhone.

I did try the app on my iPod Touch and it seems pretty decent - it's also free, which is always a plus. Not only can you check-in within seconds, but you can also keep up with your friends and see where they are checking in.

What I really do like about Footfeed is the fact that now I don't have to open up each geolocation app each time I want to check-in, and my husband can no longer laugh at me! This is definitely a huge convenience.

Related Articles

• Are Facebook Like Buttons Wrong or Right For Your Site?
• How do You “Subscribe” to a Site?
• Add Double Clicking Discovery and Sharing to Your Site with Quiqee
• A Social Network to Grow On [The Mossberg Solution]
• A new frontier. “Instant Social” experiences with Facebook

Would you check in at your next checkup? Healthcare and location-based social networks

This past week I came across some interesting new research that suggests that when it comes to online social networking, people are more likely to change health-affecting habits when encouraged to do so by online conversations with friends they already know well and with whom they are in close contact. In essence, the research suggests that the “redundancies and repetitiveness that characterizes interactions among close groups of friends is a central driving force behind encouraging people to change their health behaviors.”

This alights with word of mouth statistics showing that recommendations from a friend or family member are the most trusted sources of information. Similar to the impact of close personal relationships, local community businesses have the opportunity to utilize their proximity and relationship with their local community to serve a similar role.

With the number of local health facilities embarking into social media continuing to rise – which now boasts 825 facilities based on Ed Bennett’s Hospital Social Networking List – here are some ways that local healthcare facilities can utilize location-based social media to affect health behaviors.

Facebook Places: Facebook has shown promise as the go-to platform for many healthcare facilities – most notably hospitals.

• Places as Social Health Grader – With the launch of Places, these facilities can expect consumers to begin utilizing the commenting function to grade their experiences. Hospitals and other healthcare facilities should start looking at this tool as a grader of their service.
• Opportunities for Location-based Marketing– While there is currently no way to target Facebook ads to people who have checked in at a location, Facebook does allow you to target people who ‘Like’ your Place page if you have performed a Page to Place merge.

Foursquare: As Foursquare and other location-based social networks continue to gain mainstream traction, their uses for hospitals and other healthcare facilities is beginning to take shape.

• Awareness – With the launch of MTV’s Get Yourself Tested badge, we can expect other awareness initiatives will begin leveraging the platform. As cold and flu season approaches, the opportunity to drive vaccinations when consumers are on-site presents a great opportunity to reach a captive audience.
• Relationship Building Through Tips – A unique advantage of healthcare facilities is that they have a general understanding of why people are visiting…something health related. Whether that is a recurring visit due to a long-term illness, or a sports injury, they still have the advantage of being able to provide useful tips and recommendations based on their general sense of why consumers are at their location.
• Cross-platform Integration – According to Fox ePractice, Foursquare has confirmed that they are implementing the Facebook Places API to their service–allowing Foursquare check ins to be pushed to Facebook. This will allow hospitals to link their existing Facebook properties with the growing Foursquare user base (which just surpassed 3 million registrants last month).

There are just a few ideas on how Facebook Places and Foursquare could work for hospitals. How do you see location-based social networking impacting the healthcare industry?

Image courtesy theeyeworks.com

Related Articles

• We want your help for a location-based social networking cage match!
• Rich folks tend to have diverse social networks
• Win a Ticket to Social Media Success Summit 2010
• Show Off Your Social Networks with Yiid
• Opportunities for Brands in Social Games