I think Foursquare could be highly transportable regardless of the density of venues, because I see it as less a game of venue hopping or some sort of location scavenger hunt, but as another manifestation of social oneupmanship– and oneupmanship isn’t isolated by geography. I think we’ve all heard people say (and with no small amount of pride) “Oh, I’m a regular at such-and-such place, they totally know me there”– they may find that flashing a “Mayor” badge better drives that point home.

Very good analysis.

I think a lot of online tools are more easily used by “smart phones,” creating a bit of a social gap. If I didn’t sit in front of a computer all day, I wouldn’t update these social sites as often as I do because I don’t have a mobile device that makes it easy for me to do so. This might explain why Twitter is used by mostly older, upper middle-class people (rather than teens, who dominated Myspace back in its hay day), they can afford nicer phones that allow for micro-blogging on the go. I’d assume that the same could go for Foursquare.

Although it is somewhat lackluster for those of us without a supported device, I do agree that this seems like a really good endeavor with a lot of potential. In fact, I’m still interested in pursuing it at some point to see what kind of badges I can get, I will just have to wait to do it on a better platform. Or hopefully more venues will start to incorporate WiFi to allow further participation.