Why Foursquare being down doesn’t matter and if it does you need a new life

I don’t normally get irritated right off the bat about some of the silliness that gets written about social media and the various popular services out there but by the time that I got to the end of Martin Bryant’s post at The Next Web about the agony of Foursquare being down that point had been surpassed.

Most of the post was alright but it was his ending that really cinched my immediate irritation factor. It is one thing to wax poetically about how the different kinds of users will be upset about Foursquare being down but it is another thing to suggest that they are some sort of repository of once in a lifetime events that will be around for time immemorial is ridiculous.

Those who use it to keep a record of places they’ve been in life might be most annoyed; you can’t check in retrospectively. I’m writing this post on a London to Manchester train after a weekend in the capital. My possibly once-in-a-lifetime visits to locations well outside my everyday routine today are lost forever.

Look don’t take this personally Martin because it’s not meant that way but really … Foursquare and once in a lifetime memories that won’t be the same because you couldn’t mark them on some digital map because the service is down. Seriously. Do you realize how silly that sounds?

The fact is, thinking that anything posted on Foursquare that has to do with treasured moments will last in perpetuity is mind boggling, especially from someone who has seen more web services come and go that most people visit new places.

Anyone that thinks that companies like Foursquare are going to be around for any real length of time (be lucky to see them still here in 5 years) is dreaming. Not only are we talking about a service that is nothing more than a feature which is going to be implemented by the big players but they don’t intend on being around long enough to become a memory lock-box for your children to rummage through. Their only viable business plan is to get bought and then what happens to your cherished memories?

Being upset that some perceived treasured moment is lost because you couldn’t mark it on a map and because of this is lost forever is silly. The reality is that the moment you mark it on that map you might as well count on it being lost at some point. If you want those types of memories to be around forever take a picture and hard copy it to a picture album.