Yesterday saw the first ever Big Tweet Off on Twitter, with Foursquare coming under heavy scrutiny from numerous social media pros. And after an hour of debating the pros and cons followed by a vote, the majority opinion was that Foursquare is yet to convince people that it has the staying power for long-term success.


The Big Tweet Off is a new debating platform that pitches two well-informed people directly against each other to discuss a specific topic, before the floor is opened up for general discussion. The first debate covered the question as to whether Foursquare is the social network of the future or a time-waster’s dream. And it threw up some very interesting points for further thought and discussion.
Among those points, there was a feeling that social location may well change and evolve the way we connect with people, and that it’s helping shape the social networks of the future. Some felt that Foursquare (along with Facebook Places, Gowalla et al) is still a very young technology that, though interesting, currently lacks a little direction or real benefit, but that it has promise. And I personally would agree with these assertions. But, at present, I have to admit that I’m more convinced by the other side of the debate, that location-based networking adds little to one’s life in its current form, does more to make us more antisocial than social, and that, as I have blogged about before, the collection of badges is somewhat lame.

But the argument that no social network increases social interaction in isolation is a valid one. It is how people use these networks that counts, not what the network actually does, whether we’re talking about Foursquare or Facebook or Twitter. I don’t think at the moment, however, that the former can be considered in the same light as the latter. And, judging from yesterday’s debate, it would seem that more people agree with me than not.