Yesterday, i was in the Aviva stadium and watched Ireland beat Wales 3-0 in the first ever ‘Nations Cup‘ match. I happened to remember to check in via foursquare (i always forget to check in to places and only remember when i get home) and then thought i’d check to see if anyone was using the recently launched (in Ireland anyway) Facebook Places…
Foursquare
I checked in to foursquare at half time. There were 24 people there. I had a quick look after the match and there were now 26 including myself. The most hated person there was Cathal Y. He’s the mayor you see so everyone is out to steal his crown. That’s how foursquare works.
Facebook Places
Unfortunately Facebook places doesn’t tell you how many people have checked in at a particular time which is pretty annoying. To my surprise though, way more people had checked in to the Aviva Stadium on Facebook Places as opposed to foursquare. I counted roughly 40 people but there were probably more than that. In any case, Facebook Places kicked Foursquare’s ass in the numbers game. And it’s only about a week old.
Foursquare & Facebook Checkins -v- Attendance
There were 20,800 people at the match last night. A poor turn out considering the Aviva holds over 50,000. This was partly due to pricing, partly due to the opposition, partly due to the day & time. It’s always sad seeing any stadium half empty. It instantly kills atmosphere. Nobody wants to be stuck in amongst a gang of empty plastic seats for 90 minutes.
Anyway, there were 26 checkins on foursquare and let’s say 40 on Facebook, so that was 66 in total. I’m guessing a few people like myself checked in on both, so let’s round it down to 60 which is still generous.
That means only about 0.3% of people at the match last night use location services like Foursquare & Facebook places. So that’s something worth noting the next time you boast about earning a new mayorship title on Foursquare. The chances are not only will nobody care, they won’t have *a clue* what you’re talking about. Then again only about 40% of the population are on Facebook. The other 60% certainly aren’t clueless when it comes to the Facebooks, they’ve probably taken the decision not to join claiming it’s stupid and that they don’t want to know what strangers ate for breakfast. Or maybe that’s the twitter tweets machine.