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Don’t Be a Jerk, Let Them Work: Too Many Check-Ins PSA [VIDEO]

I realized I was making too many check-ins when I noticed I had 6 geo-location networks on my phone (the only thing I didn’t have was Facebook Places, and I’m sure my Facebook for Android app has it already installed).

I shot this video as a part of 12 Stars Media’s You Do Video program, on the Flip camera they provided me, with help from Meghan Barich’s @MeghanBarich help, as well as Pamela the Barista), and then was so ashamed that I actually had nearly all of the apps I named that I deleted Whrrl and Hashable, and saved myself over 10 GB of space on my phone.

I also realized that there are just too many geo-location networks out there. I frequently use Foursquare, Gowalla, and Yelp, because I like their game psychology and the chance to win badges, pins, and titles. I like how retail stores and restaurants have embraced Foursquare to offer specials for check-ins. I like how Gowalla offers special “trips,” encouraging visitors to check out different places in a city, and I appreciate Yelp’s user-generated reviews of a restaurant, which help me decided whether to eat at a place or not.

So I’m paring down to only those three, and while I may check out some other location-based apps in the future, especially any hyperlocal ones that focuses on a specific city, I don’t plan on adding any more. I may even drop one or two in the future, especially if Foursquare would ever add more user-generated reviews in the future, and not just tips.

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Are There Too Many Geo-Location Networks?

A couple days ago, I shot a quick video for 12 Stars Media’s You Do Video program, spoofing all the different check-ins I could make on my phone. In the video, I checked in (pretended to; I was acting!) on 7 different geo-location networks.

The sad thing was that out of the 7 I named, I actually had 6 of them on my phone.

Now, I’m a regular Foursquare user. I’ve invested the most time and effort into it. And I’ve played with Gowalla, and I like that they create tours that users can take of different cities (I may even create my own tour for Indianapolis). But then there’s Whrrl (which Jason Falls got me to try), Hashable, Google Latitude, Yelp (I blame Thomas Ho for that one), and Facebook Places (the one geo-location network I refuse to use). I even signed up for Bizzy, but haven’t installed it.

Someone had the brilliant idea of creating a third-party app that would check in to all of your geo-location networks at once, but Foursquare and others said they wouldn’t give any points from those third-party check-in apps, so I gave up.

There are just too many damn geo-location apps to keep track of. I know there are at least a couple dozen more that I could be using. But I was so disgusted with my geo-whoring that I dropped Whrrl (sorry, Jason) and Hashable from my phone, and saved myself about 10 MB in space. I also removed Latitude from my home screen, and recommitted to not using Facebook Places. I’ll stick with Foursquare, use Yelp when I want to leave a restaurant review, and use Gowalla only on road trips.

What about you? What geo-location networks are you using? Or are you avoiding them completely? Let me hear from you.