Ways to represent a "check-in" at a place

[Rob Dolin]

One of the major themes I took-away from South by Southwest was social aspects around places with services like Foursquare and Gowalla as popular examples of services in this space. 

 

I’ve been brainstorming a bit around how to represent a “check-in” and wanted to contribute my notes to the group.  If there’s interest in adding support for this type and/or consensus around a potential representation, I’ll merge the notes/discussion into the wiki.

 

Thanks—

--Rob

 

 

Here are examples of how these activities are represented on their respective sites:

 

Gowalla (http://gowalla.com/users/RobDolin)

 

Foursquare (http://foursquare.com/history)

 

Here are some potential representations in Activity Streams:

 

Potential representation:	Option A) Verb: Save Object: Place	Option B) Verb: Check-in Object: Place	Option C) Verb: Post Object: Check-in Target: Place
Pros	No new schema	The verb would indicate the actor is at the place	Most meaning conveyed; Check-in element can represent user’s comment
Cons	Unclear if the actor is currently at the Place or just saving it; No element to represent user comment	No element to represent user comment

 

I think option C) would be the best as it affords for conveying both the user’s comment and the place.

 

Here’s a basic representation of my “@ Microsoft Building 88 ! Working on Sunday” check-in:

 

<entry>

…

<activity:verb>…Post

<activity:object>

    <activity:object-type>…Check-in

    <title>Working on Sunday

</activity:object>

<activity:target>

    <activity:object-type>…Place

    <title>Microsoft Building 88

    <link rel=”alternate” type=”text/html” href=”http://gowalla.com/spots/90490” />

    <geo:point>47.65357375, -122.1347951833

</activity:target>

…

</entry>

[Chris Messina]

This is a great start Rob, thanks for writing it up. I went ahead and added it to the wiki to capture this initial stab at it:

http://wiki.activitystrea.ms/Checkin

Curiously, I originally imagined that "checkin" would be a verb — rather than an object-type. But when I read through your example, "posting" a "checkin" actually seems to make some sense.

That said, since we already have an object-type of Place, a checkin seems redundant.

http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/place

Therefore, I believe "checkin" is a verb that you perform with a target of a Place. This allows us to have other verbs around Places, like "arrive at", "checkout of", "visit" and so on (verbs that appear in the Rummble service, for example).

Even if the object-type is a Place, I think we can add a Note or annotation as an additional object of the checkin verb.

I've tentatively treated "checkin" as an object-type on the wiki, but I'd like to hear other implementors' opinions of the verb vs object-type approaches.

Chris

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[adrian chan]

This is an interesting case where both verb and object types may apply -- a foursquare checkin is not just a checkin to a location, it's a checkin on foursquare... So the location type is true in reality; and the verb type is true for the foursquare member. 

Foursquare is a service that adds activity to location at the meta level -- so its actions can be captured and parsed at a meta level of activity to the reality (location) it refers to. 

I don't know what if any implications this would have for the spec at this point -- but if in the future foursquare checkins "do" more than associate user with location, both object and verb will be necessary. An object type "checkin" may be supplmented with verb type "party" -- used in some future foursquare in which people might send event announcements, party invites, meetup requests when checking in... 

just my two cents

cheers,

adrian

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[Martin Atkins]

On 03/22/2010 02:09 PM, Chris Messina wrote:
>
> Even if the object-type is a Place, I think we can add a Note or
> annotation as an additional object of the checkin verb.

Note that right now we have no such "annotation" or "additional object"
construct, since the concept of verb-specific activity properties was
removed at our last meetup in favor of having a consistent data model
for all activities.

It does seem like Foursquare doesn't consider "a checkin" to be an
object in the sense of a page you can link to and which has other data
attached to it, which makes me think that your intuition is correct that
check in should be a verb rather than an object type.

Do you think there's a difference between posting a note while you're in
a place and posting a checkin that has a note? If not, we could simply
say that if you want to post text with a checkin you should post a note
with a location attached. I think Foursquare makes a distinction between
a checkin and a "shout", the latter of which is a location-sensitive
note, right?

[Chris Messina]

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 3:25 PM, Martin Atkins <ma...@degeneration.co.uk> wrote:

On 03/22/2010 02:09 PM, Chris Messina wrote:

Even if the object-type is a Place, I think we can add a Note or
annotation as an additional object of the checkin verb.

Note that right now we have no such "annotation" or "additional object" construct, since the concept of verb-specific activity properties was removed at our last meetup in favor of having a consistent data model for all activities.

Ok, I thought that might be the case.

 

It does seem like Foursquare doesn't consider "a checkin" to be an object in the sense of a page you can link to and which has other data attached to it, which makes me think that your intuition is correct that check in should be a verb rather than an object type.

I'm now more convinced that checkin should be a verb (and will update the wiki accordingly).

Even if there's a case for a "checkin" object, I think it's use is far more circumscribed than a "Place". 

 

Do you think there's a difference between posting a note while you're in a place and posting a checkin that has a note? If not, we could simply say that if you want to post text with a checkin you should post a note with a location attached. I think Foursquare makes a distinction between a checkin and a "shout", the latter of which is a location-sensitive note, right?

Yeah, that's probably the easiest way to model this... simply use the Checkin verb at a Place, and then Post a Note using the same geo coordinates. The result is two activities, but I think that that's more convenient than the alternative of conflating the "checkin" and "post a note" activities. If you think about how Twitter has added geolocation to its service/API, they don't have a "checkin" verb, but still publish notes with location data attached... which should be modeled identically to Foursquare.

Chris

[Monica Keller]

On Mar 22, 3:58 pm, Chris Messina <chris.mess...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 3:25 PM, Martin Atkins <m...@degeneration.co.uk>wrote:
>
> > On 03/22/2010 02:09 PM, Chris Messina wrote:
>
> >> Even if the object-type is a Place, I think we can add a Note or
> >> annotation as an additional object of the checkin verb.
>
> > Note that right now we have no such "annotation" or "additional object"
> > construct, since the concept of verb-specific activity properties was
> > removed at our last meetup in favor of having a consistent data model for
> > all activities.
>
> Ok, I thought that might be the case.
>
> > It does seem like Foursquare doesn't consider "a checkin" to be an object
> > in the sense of a page you can link to and which has other data attached to
> > it, which makes me think that your intuition is correct that check in should
> > be a verb rather than an object type.
>
> I'm now more convinced that checkin should be a verb (and will update the
> wiki accordingly).
>

+1 Agreed its a verb similar to arrived, put or insert

Are we thinking about having the place be the target and omitting the
object or putting the actor as the object

[Chris Messina]

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Monica Keller <monica...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm now more convinced that checkin should be a verb (and will update the
> wiki accordingly).
>

+1 Agreed its a verb similar to arrived, put or insert

Are we thinking about having the place be the target and omitting the
object or putting the actor as the object

I'm not sure that the semantic of "target" makes as much sense there... I could see a target being, perhaps, an event (checking in to a specific location during an event, for example), but I think the basic format is:

"Chris checked in to [Placename]."

Pretty sure the Place *is* the object.

Chris 

[Monica Keller]

I thought the same as well but then read the first couple posts on the thread were Rob was proposing having place be the target

And you replied

>> Therefore, I believe "checkin" is a verb that you perform with a target of a Place.

And it did seem logical

Considering the concept of code.

verb : check-in
object: file
target: source control repo

Considering people

verb:check-in
object: person
target:place

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