I’ve never been a huge fan of location based social media such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, or Loopt. I’ve tried using Foursquare a little and ended up checking in about once a month. To me, I don’t really care all that much that my friends “checked into” their office or the grocery store.
As a fan of drinking beer, I’m a little behind the times though as there is a similar social network that was designed just for us beer drinkers that launched towards the end of last year called Untappd, which makes much more sense to me to use.
What I like about it is that you check into beer instead of specific places (although you can include that if you want to). So if I’m drinking a Pliny the Elder, I can check into that and it keeps track of the different beers I’ve had. Then my friends can discuss that beer with me if they want to. It takes drinking beer to a whole new social level.
Not only does it make it social, but you also earn badges much like Foursquare. The main difference though is you have to drink beer to earn your badges which I don’t mind doing. It adds a level of accomplishment to your beer drinking.
One other feature that I like about it is the beer wish list. You can setup a list of the beers you want to try and check them off when you drink them. For guys like me with a bad memory, I appreciate that feature quite a bit.
The only downfall I see with Untappd is that they make you check in on your mobile phone so you can’t check in on your computer. I drink beer quite often at home and it would be much easier to just jump on the computer.
Check it out if you haven’t yet and add me as a friend at http://untappd.com/user/blogaboutbeer.
Are you on Untappd? Do you find it useful?
Comments
I am in total agreement with Untappd. I hardly ever use Fours square but I must use Untappd every day. I am really looking forward to see how the app grows.
It will be interesting to see how it grows. It is really new and i’m already impressed with the functionality. Will be interesting to see how it changes though in the next year or two.
I agree with you on the downfall. I really wish I could check in via the computer.
Right now it’s a little bit buggy, but it reminds me of where foursquare was two years ago.
while I love foursquare, I would be lost without Untappd!
Yes, you can access Untappd from home. Firefox with the User Agent Switcher extension makes it easy. You can do it with a little more work (from the command line) in Chrome.
Install the User Agent Switcher extension for Firefox and add a mobile User Agent. One to simulate Android works well, such as the string:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.1; en-us; Nexus S Build/GRH78) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1
Switch to your new Android user agent when access m.untappd.com and you’re good to go.
I agree though – it’s a shame they make home access so difficult.
I have never heard of Untappd, but I just checked it out and I will be up and running with it in no time. Thanks for passing it along!
I have also been hesitant to use FourSquare, but this sounds very cool. Thanks for sharing.
Just created an account, and I like it so far–it seems like more of a novelty than anything else, but I’m certainly looking forward to seeing how the whole operation evolves. I imagine at some point they will allow home access, but I think they might be subtly encouraging people not to drink home alone, haha. I live in a cold place with not a lot of nightlife, so I thoroughly enjoy the strong beer at home to keep warm.
Love this! Definitely going to create an account and mess with it, its nice to finally have a social media tool that addresses drinking specifically (not sure if that is a good thing ha ha).