For a while, I was one of “those” Foursquare people.  You know… rushing to document each and every place I visited, interrupting conversations with real life people to look down at my phone and find the appropriate check-in location, and generally Type-A about becoming the Mayor of SOMETHING for goodness sake.  I truly felt sadness at my recent ousting from the Mayorship of the Hotel Triton in SF earlier this week.

I liked Foursquare because it was turning my nomadic life into a real life video game.  On top of my Kimpton stays and frequent flier miles, I was getting electronic cred for criss-crossing the country every week and I liked it.  Now, I’m approaching done.  3 reasons why:

1) Frustration – The quick proliferation of users has taken the definition of “location” from geo to nano.  As the user-define locations on Foursquare have gotten smaller and smaller, the user is overwhelmed with options for where to check in – none of which may seem “legit” or correct.  I won’t pore through 50 different options figuring out where to check in.  The only plus is that this allows for more “Mayors”.

2) Loss of Utility – The “nano” problem above also reduces the utility of the tool.  I’m interested in seeing who else is at the Austin airport – not who is at gate 18 or at the Auntie Anne’s pretzels by Delta in Concourse B.  This means I can really only look at where my current friends are and that’s it.

3) Now What? Once you’ve opened all the badges for your normal activity, whither thou goest your Foursquare experience?  This phenomenon is relatively well documented – quite amusingly as “Apathy” in this “From Addiction to Apathy” post from Fast Company (h/t @KaiMac).

I hope there is a plan – a deeper level of engagement?, maybe “verified” locations a la Twitter?  I hope so, but I may have to read about it in Mashable because I’m not sure I’ll still be a user when they figure it out.