Ozzie Sport

It is day three and the trend appears to be fewer Foursquare checkins. It is interesting to speculate why. The six teams at the bottom of the checkin ladder all played in games with one European side. Two of those matches were against African sides and one was against Asian side. Those six teams failed to earn their supporters a swarm badge. Is Foursquare less popular in Europe than it is in English speaking countries? Do football fans from those countries use other geolocation sites? Let me know.

Ladder Table

Data Table

Related Posts:

• World Cup, day 8: Foursquare and gowalla checkin totals
• World Cup, day 7: Foursquare checkin totals
• World Cup, day 6: Foursquare checkin totals
• World Cup, day 2: Foursquare checkin totals

With a few more teams having played, checkin patterns may be emerging. Only one game hasn’t gotten a swarm badge. The game involved an Asian team and a less popular European team. English language speaking countries doesn’t seem to be a factor for checkins at this point as the Nigeria vs. Argentina game was second.  I’ve also tacked on Gowalla data to the end of this post as there isn’t much there to really supply another post: People are just not using it at any volume similar to that of Foursquare.

Onwards with the data set…

Rankings Table

Raw Data

Gowalla

Related Posts:

• World Cup, day 8: Foursquare and gowalla checkin totals
• World Cup, day 7: Foursquare checkin totals
• World Cup, day 6: Foursquare checkin totals
• World Cup, day 3: Foursquare checkin totals

This post is similar to the Foursquare Checkins for the World Cup in terms of content and purpose.  The only real difference is that it looks at a different service.  Gowalla is popular with a number of people in the US and elsewhere because it allows users to upload pictures to the location page and allows friends to easily comment in reply to people who are at that location.  It just doesn’t have as many total users as Foursquare. I thought it would be interesting to track the differences in checkins on Gowalla as they appear to cater to a different type of user than Foursquare.  This leads to a question of if and how the checkin patterns between the services will differ?  (They do appear to after the first set of games as the total checkins are the same.)  Gowalla is different than Foursquare in that you can retrospectively go in and get by date data so long as you get it in the past 30 days.  Foursquare requires manually getting this information every day. Also worth noting, it looks like Gowalla also updated their World Cup venues to merge duplicate locations. This was done some time between June 7 and June 12, 2010. As a researcher, I find this less problematic than Foursquare because of how Gowalla shows its checkins. Either way, as I can see by date checkins, it doesn’t effect historical checkins.

Below are the tables for total checkins and raw data.

Total and Average Checkins

Raw Data

Related Posts:

• World Cup, day 8: Foursquare and gowalla checkin totals
• World Cup, day 2: Foursquare checkin totals
• World Cup, day 7: Foursquare checkin totals
• World Cup, day 6: Foursquare checkin totals

To anyone who reads this regularly, I apologize in advance.  I may update this information with new posts on a fairly regular basis during the World Cup.   A question I’ve had prior to the World Cup was: Will certain teams have more foursquare checkins than other teams?  This has some interesting side questions that are not available from the data but are interesting to speculate about: Who is checking in to these games?  Are checkins by game reflective of the composition of a nation’s supporters who made the trip? (Or because certain national contingents are more likely to have smart phones that are compatible with South Africa’s mobile network?) Are tech savvy South Africans more likely to show up for certain games involving certain nations?

Only two games have been played so far.  There isn’t much data.  Both groups of fans should have earned swarm badges.  Below are two charts.  The first is the totals by team. The second is my raw data.

Totals and Averages by Team

Raw data

Related Posts:

• World Cup, day 8: Foursquare and gowalla checkin totals
• World Cup, day 7: Foursquare checkin totals
• World Cup, day 6: Foursquare checkin totals
• World Cup, day 5: Foursquare checkin totals