And badges Dennis, badges. I collected them all over the planet. Swarm badges. Special badges. Badges nobody else had. Every year, the first check-in in Austin gave me my SxSW anniversary badge. I got the far-away badge. I woke up at ungodly hours to get the middle-of-the-night badge. The pub-crawl-badge. The hang-over badge.

We used our phones like guns, slinging it faster than our shadow to beat others at check-ins.

I tried to warn you. Remember that stern conversation in Cannes two years ago? But you would not listen. You had to change Foursquare your way.

No more mayorships. No more leader-boards. No more badges. No easy way to see where my friends are. You split my favorite application in two…. And none of the two halves is doing it for me. I cannot even figure out which of the two annoys me more…

Swarm and Foursquare. You even changed the logo. My badges are gone. So is my interest. The apps seem doing all fine by themselves. One looks a bit like a worse version of Yelp. The other one… what exactly is the other one Dennis?

I cannot stomach the courage to uninstall them. And apparently they know where I am. That’s good.

But you killed the fun in being a Foursquare user Dennis. There is no excitement left. No fun. No adrenaline. Foursquare outlived its usefulness to me.

I would have broken up with you face to face. In person, Two adults. But you are nowhere to be seen here at SxSW Dennis . There is Meerkat. And flying cars,  Nasa, robots. But you and your hoodie are nowhere to be seen.

I’m having a beer in the bar. Alone. To toast to our good old days.

What happened to ‘look and listen’ ?

by Danny Devriendt @ #SxSW