Foursquare, stop leeching my Twitter Network!

I hate when people link their online accounts because I hate redundancy.  If I see the same message from you on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, I know you have no clue who you are writing for.  Even worse, you’ve just wasted ten seconds of my life reading the same boring message about your bacon cheeseburger cravings.

While there is some aspects of linking that are debatable, the other aspect of account linking I hate is when other services start leeching off of that network to build theirs.  Case in point: Foursquare.

When I signed up for Foursquare, I linked my Facebook and my Twitter accounts to Foursquare.  I was dumb and naive.  I had no idea what would eventually happen.

While I appreciated the ability to find new people to connect with quickly, I soon realized that I get a lot of messages from people who I follow or follow me on Twitter that I don’t know outside of 140 characters.  I can’t vouch for these people the 23 hours of the day they aren’t sending messages into the internet.

Foursquare defaults its privacy settings to share your e-mail and phone number with the people you designate as friends on its service.  While that could work well for people you know in real life, it’s scary for the multitude of people on there you aren’t as familiar with.  I like my Twitter friends, but I don’t need them calling me up everyday.

It boils down to this simple question: Do I know you in real life?  If you can answer that as yes, then I might consider having you as a Foursquare friend.  If the answer is maybe or no, just leave me alone.  I’ll be better off not knowing when you check into a strip club.

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