Can Foursquare Data Predict Where You Live? 55
chicksdaddy writes "File this one under 'proof of the obvious,' but researchers at the recent 4th International Workshop on Location Based Social Networks presented a paper proving that your activity on Foursquare can be used to reliably determine your hometown. A study of data on 13 million Foursquare accounts showed that researchers could infer 'with high accuracy' where a particular user lives based on their accumulation of mayorships, check-ins and tips. Specifically: the researchers could correctly infer the home town of the Foursquare users 78% of the time, within an accuracy of about 50 kilometers."
Captain Obvious triumphs again (Score:5, Insightful)
This study funded by the Foundation for Obvious Studies, and will soon be published in the Journal for Obvious and Tautological Results.
In a follow up study, they'll figure out where you work, too.
Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah uh, how is this impressive? I'd be pretty surprised if you couldn't figure out generally where someone lived in from Foursquare, considering for most people, most of their check-ins will be in the city/town in which they live. I mean seriously, 50 km accuracy? My mid-sized (400,000 population) city is around 40 km north to south, and is the only logical place where someone would live in this area (no other significant settlements for at least 100 km in any direction), so that's obvious. And in more rural areas there'd be 50km at least between towns here (Australia), so again it makes it bleedingly obvious where someone would live. In "dense rural" areas common in Europe and North America where there's lots of separate small towns close together this might be a bit more impressive, but still...
I clicked on the link expecting a method whereby they got it down to a particular neighbourhood/a couple of km accuracy.
As an example, checking my own Foursquare profile, out of my total checkins:
- 1 is in Hong Kong
- 2 are in Macau
- 2 are in France
- 3 are in Canada
- 7 are in the UK
- 14 are in Singapore
- 33 are in the United States
- 152 are in Australia (home)
So the home country should be fairly obvious from that. And then of the 152 Australia checkins, 68 are in my home city, which is substantially more than any other single city or town. And that's only looking at checked-in places without considering how OFTEN I check into them. If you look at those figures it becomes even more apparent: the places with the most check-ins are my work and the local airport.
Re:colour me uninpressed (Score:1, Insightful)