Tips, dones and todos

This study reveals the existence of very active and influential users, some of which are famous businesses and brands, that seem engaged in posting tips at a large variety of venues while also receiving a great amount of user feedback on them.

Abstract

Online Location Based Social Networks (LBSNs), which combine social network features with geographic information sharing, are becoming increasingly popular. One such application is Foursquare, which doubled its user population in less than six months. Among other features, Foursquare allows users to leave tips (i.e., reviews or recommendations) at specific venues as well as to give feedback on previously posted tips by adding them to their to-do lists or marking them as done. In this paper, we analyze how Foursquare users exploit these three features - tips, dones and to-dos - uncovering different behavior profiles. Our study reveals the existence of very active and influential users, some of which are famous businesses and brands, that seem engaged in posting tips at a large variety of venues while also receiving a great amount of user feedback on them. We also provide evidence of spamming, showing the existence of users that post tips whose contents are unrelated to the nature or domain of the venue where the tips were left.