Foursquare lets people know where you are...even burglars.

Foursquare is a location based application that acts as a social network with gaming elements mixed in. The purpose of this game is to "check-in" when you arrive at a venue such as a restaurant or a bar, letting everyone in your network know where you are. As a user, once you check into a venue a certain number of times, you are awarded a badge for that venue, letting everyone in your network that you frequent that establishment. The service has been growing quickly as of late, as the application currently generates a million "check-ins" per week.

While it is clear that Foursquare is on to something with their location based social game, a few concerns over privacy have arisen in the last few weeks. In fact, a recent application launched in the app store called "Please Rob Me", which according to TechCrunch is "a stream of updates from various location-based networks that shows when users check-in somewhere that is not their home. The idea, of course, is that if they’re not home, you can go rob them."While this application is more about poking fun at the movement towards location based applications, it does bring up a serious question about privacy. Unfortunately, a potential byproduct of letting a broad group of people know of your whereabouts is the possibility that a member of that group could use that information for nefarious purposes.

I think a possible reaction from this negative publicity could be a pullback in how far people choose to extend their social networks. During the Facebook craze of the last few years, the tendency has been for users to "friend" as many people as possible in order to create a large network. However, the introduction of location based platforms may put a new premium on privacy and control. Users may start to decide that it is not smart to tell a group of 500 or 1,000 people where they are eating, as the downside in that situation may outweigh the upside. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out but I think this notion of privacy within a social network will start to become even more of hot button issue with the roll out of applications like Foursquare.