Foursquare Infographic

After seeing several links to it, I finally got around to taking a look at Foursquare’s 2010 year-end infographic. (Check it out if you haven’t already.)

I generally like data mining like this and infographics, but to be honest, I was actually surprised by how uninteresting this was. The map is cool, but it’s tough to get much out of it because the data isn’t scaled by population. Looking at the US, that map just looks like a population density map. Is foursquare more popular per capita in cities than towns? I’d imagine so, but there’s no way for me to see it here.

Why does the food check-in rate barely change between lunch and dinner? I can’t tell if that’s just timing noise or something meaningful. I’m surprised that the food check-in rate is never more than double the work check-in rate. I’m not sure what that implies, though.

I won’t list every part that I found uninteresting, but I will say that the one section that shows some promise is “gym checkins”. It shows which states have the highest number of gym check-ins as a percentage of total check-ins. It’s too bad they just left it there, though. How do gym check-ins vary with park check-ins? Does weather affect that ratio? How do gym check-ins rise and decline after Jan 1? How do gym check-ins relate to fast food check-ins?

There’s so much more you could do, too. Off the top of my head: Given a check-in history, you could model jet lag and watch how jet lag affects meal times as the traveler adjusts. Given a snow storm, you could watch how visits to restaurants go down and supermarkets go up.

Hopefully they’ll have something more interesting next year, as I’m still optimistic that there’s fascinating stuff in that data.