There was a story went around the Net a couple of years ago. It goes like this...
Barbra Streisand was relaxing at home listening to the radio, when the show she was listening to breaks for Ads. She notices the sudden increase in volume during the ad break (which is common to Radio and TV - the volume is boosted during ad breaks) and rather than reach for the remote to lower the volume like a poor pleb like me would do, she calls the radio station to complain and insist they lower the volume on their ad breaks. I don't know if Barbra Streisand was successful in her plea to get the station to keep its broadcasting at an even volume (I doubt it) or even if this story is true. What I do remember is the collective rolling of eyes when the story broke a couple of years ago. The commentary went something along the lines of "Yup, That's something a pampered Diva like Streisand would do all right".
What no one seemed to mention was that Barbra Streisand had a point.
I bring this up because yesterday I had one of my regulars rants about FourSquare cross-posts on Twitter, and got the usual response of "Use Filters!". FourSquare check-ins, mayorships, mayorship oustings, and badge award tweets are Really Fucking Annoying (tm). Seriously, no one cares (except you and the mayor you just ousted) if you just ousted so-and-so as the Mayor of generic-coffee-shop. No one. In fact we Twitter folk would prefer if you FourSquare users kept that to yourselves. Why can't FourSquare users just - you know - keep it to themselves? Why does FourSquare continue to encourage cross-posting? Doesn't FourSquare already have a way to let connected FourSquare users know when they've checked in etc? The argument for cross-posting to twitter goes "It facilitates augmented serendipity by letting twitter users who might not be on 4sq know when their friends are nearby" but the counter-argument is this: if I'm interested I'll already be signed up to 4sq and will already have been notified so stop polluting my twitter stream.
Cross-posting is when you do some low-effort activity in Social Network A and it shows up in Social Network B. Auto-posting is when you create something (an audioboo recording, a video clip, a blog post - anything which requires creative effort) and share it on a Social Network. The difference is the effort required to create the content. So, Auto-posting is good but Cross-posting is bad.
I honestly think FourSquare users are completely fucking oblivious to just how annoying their 4sq tweets are, otherwise they wouldn't do it. And that's the crux of the problem, FourSquare users are oblivious because they are tweeting 'In Absentia', they are not really present on twitter when they cross-post from FourSquare. It's a fire-and-forget cross-post with little thought, information or personality put into it. Cross-posting from FourSquare is bad, for the same reason cross-posting across all social networks is bad - it betrays a fundamental lack of respect for the people you're connected to. Is the once in a blue moon serendipitous meet-up with a fellow FourSquare Jock worth the ongoing low-level ill will you've sown among your Twitter friends? Of course not. FourSquare users will still insist that it is. Look, I'm happy that you've accepted Location-aware Augmented Serendipity and Loyalty Discounts into your hearts, I really am, but FourSquare users are like Jehovah's Witnesses, I'm happy for you but please get off my porch.