Well, it has finally happened. You guru’s have overexposed yourself and look what has happened…

I went all out last week and made a prediction on the ‘next big thing’. No, it wasn’t Tony Abbott. I was talking about Foursquare. I won’t go into what Foursquare is here but Mark Pollard has a nice overview of the functionality and his experience with it here.

I just want to rattle off a few dot points on why I think Foursquare will change the marketing game for business. Here’s how…

Is it just me or did advertisers used to support programs? When did programming start attaching themselves to the advertisers?

Bloody hell it is hot. So hot that it means delicate skin people like me have to put sunscreen on before we open the bedroom window in the morning. Yet for our olive brothers it means tan time. And for every lobster nose this summer there will be a sun safety message.

Pretty full on. But do you accept the message or fight it?

“I’m in the area, I’ll call into your place in five minutes.”

These simple words can cause mass hysteria and panic. Whether spoken by the in-laws, a close friend or the creepy IT guy, they are cause for concern. All of a sudden we are in a mad rush to wash the dishes at the kitchen sink, change the channel from Dr Phil to Discovery Channel and scramble to put some pants on. We can’t let any visitors in the house looking like this!

It’s natural to hide how we really live and who we really are. This can be done by portraying a perfect domestic life, borrowing more money than we should or suppressing an online personality. It’s not that we’re doing anything wrong. We just have an ideal image we like to portray.

Last week the Rudd Government upheld the law which states that Australian book stores can not import any book which has been published within Australia within 30 days of its international launch. This law is in place to protect Australian publishers. The challenge to the law came from Australian book retailers who claim that it keeps their prices inflated and does not allow them to compete with the online book industry.

But what does this protection mean for consumers? Are we getting ripped off if we go into a physical book shop? Do these restrictions combined with increased online competition mean physical book retailers no longer offer us value?