The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
#2This problem isn't solved yet. For me at least. I turned on the passive notifications, and they started going off when I was traveling on above ground sections of the subway. Or when I got out by my office.
So I turned them off. Somehow Foursquare needs to crack working out when I want those notifications and when they're irrelevant. They should have enough data to do it.
Re: The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
#3Summary:
FourSquare is moving from a checkin service to doing positioning data at higher accuracy and lower power based on big data. http://www.skyhookwireless.com/ does the same thing. Maybe not as well, but generally the same.
Re: The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
#4foursquare is still around?
Hyperbole aside, I thought foursquare was an excellent idea - and if more businesses around me used it, I"d probably still be using it myself. (Reading the article, it seems that if you live in NYC or SF it's a lot more useful than it's been to me.)
As it is, I think the last time I even looked at it was nearly six months ago.
Re: The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
#5Page is blank when adblock is enabled. Anyone else having this problem?
I just won't read this article now. Not my problem.
Re: The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
#6Page is blank when adblock is enabled. Anyone else having this problem? I just won't read this article now. Not my problem.
Using Safari with ad blocker and I can see the content.
I really didn't want to install an ad blocker but the damn pop-ups were getting too much.
Re: The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
#7> Foursquare already had a massive database of check-ins — location information about the places its users most liked to go. And this data didn’t just include the place where someone had checked in. It showed how strong the GPS signal was at the time, how strong each surrounding Wi-Fi hotspot signal was, what local cell towers were nearby, and so on. Leveraging this data meant that Foursquare could still grab a good current location even if users were underground, near a source of radio interference, or facing some other signal obstacle. Chances are, some prior Foursquare user had seen the world through the same flawed eyes and reported his or her location.
This sounds more valuable as a technology than the social network side of the business itself.
If another company wanted to build up a similar database of location information, they could send out a fleet of its own staff all over the world to collect it, à la Google's Street View cars. But Foursquare has managed to sidestep all of this expense and infrastructure by harnessing its userbase as a massive, free source of data input.
Through badges, recommendations, and deals with local stores, they've created an incentive to provide the data they need. And through the mechanisms they have to prevent cheating in the game side of things, they've accidentally developed a way to ensure the accuracy of the location information their system can provide.
Licensing out this technology could become the long-sought-after profit engine for Foursquare, paying the bills for the flashy social network layer on top that keeps the data flowing in.
Re: The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
#8foursquare is still around? Hyperbole aside, I thought foursquare was an excellent idea - and if more businesses around me used it, I"d probably still be using it myself. (Reading the article, it seems that if you live in NYC or SF it's a lot more useful than it's been to me.) As it is, I think the last time I even looked at it was nearly six months ago.
"if you live in NYC or SF it's a lot more useful than it's been to me"
It seems like services that bring people from vast geographic distances (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) have a longer life than services the geo-limit the audience. If you're in NYC, SF, or LA, geo-limited services work due to density, but you the threshold seems to dive after a couple of cities down the list. Color was the ultimate example for me on something that was so geo-limited that I couldn't imagine it working.
Re: The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
#9foursquare is still around? Hyperbole aside, I thought foursquare was an excellent idea - and if more businesses around me used it, I"d probably still be using it myself. (Reading the article, it seems that if you live in NYC or SF it's a lot more useful than it's been to me.) As it is, I think the last time I even looked at it was nearly six months ago.
"if you live in NYC or SF it's a lot more useful than it's been to me" It seems like services that bring people from vast geographic distances (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) have a longer life than services the geo-limit the audience. If you're in NYC, SF, or LA, geo-limited services work due to density, but you the threshold seems to dive after a couple of cities down the list. Color was the ultimate example for me on som…
It's the density that make Foursquare more popular in SF and NYC but rather the demographics of those areas, modern, high tech centers of urban sophistication. The fly over states are more concerned with the latest developments in pickups and gun racks to care much about checking in at the hottest espresso bar.
Re: The Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From The Dead
#10To save you some reading, the crux of the hack is to consider a weak GPS (etc) signal not as a lack of data, but rather as a source of data in itself: the fact that the GPS signal is weak tells you something about the user's probable location.