One of the latest trends in social media is the rise of location-based services. With the introduction of Foursquare last year, and Facebook Places (in some locations) this year, one university is taking advantage of the increased exposure by encouraging their students to check in via Facebook.

(Hat tip to @invoke for the tweet.)

If you aren’t familiar with this concept of geolocation and “checking in”, I’ve written a brief backgrounder on “checking in”. Go check it out! (Sorry for the bad pun.)

Privacy-issues aside, I think it’s all fun and such to set up real-life markers where you encourage people to check in. But what would be even more compelling to me, would be to see alumni do a check in where they are around the world.

A Flash-Mob Check-In: Alumni Style

I’m not thinking of a random check in, but rather one big mass coordinated check-in on an agreed upon day and time.

It could be the first day of school, or the last day of class, or the first day of graduation – just agree to a single day – the point being that alum around the world would check-in to show their peers and future alum where they are and what they’re doing.

It would be almost like a flash-mob showing up out of nowhere on the street, only it could be Facebook and Twitter posts showing up in status updates, saying the likes of:

“Working on my PhD at George Washington University”

We could add a hashtag to coordinate it:

“Competing in the Olympics #ubc-checkin“

And maybe even add your grad year to the hashtag:

“Climbing Machu Picchu #ubc-checkin-2001“

To take it to the next level, imagine each check in as a pin + blow-up bubble, thrown onto a visualized map. You would see check-ins locally across the province, the country, North America, but then also all around the world.

How cool would that be?

And not only cool, but it could also be incredibly helpful to our whole network of UBC alums – think of students who are wondering where you end up with one of those Arts degrees, or a soon-to-be-grad who’s about to move to a new city or country, even alums 10 years out of university who are making career transitions. Other than being cool, there would be a real utility to this.

What do you think?

Backgrounder: Checking In

• Checking in is a more recent trend in social media playing off of geo-location
• The basic premise is you “check in” online to a location in the real world, and in doing so announce to the world (or at least the portion of the world that pays attention to you) where you are and what you’re doing
• For brands, check-ins can be a way to gain user-generated exposure; some businesses will offer incentives for frequent visitors who repeatedly check in to their locations
• For users, check-ins can be a way to show and express your affinity to certain brands/businesses, while also being a way to generally increase your social participation online – it can also be a great way to discover new places by following where your friends (people who share similar interests to you) are checking into
• Popular location-based services include Foursquare and more recently Facebook via Facebook Places