A lot of my non techie friends love using Foursquare!
There is such huge potential for serious monetisation with local deals, time is running out to really capitalise on that though.
Is Foursquare in trouble?
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Re: Is Foursquare in trouble?
#12I don't really see Foursquare's use case being for tourism. I see it as more of a Yelp replacement. And for that, I thoroughly enjoy it more. The problem with Yelp is that it feels like a restaurant review app that happens to have a location aspect, rather than a location based app that does restaurants.
Foursquare answers a basic question: what around me is worth doing? (Mainly that is eating for me). Popping up explore this morning gives me a list of interesting coffee shops and breakfast places in my neighborhood. It's truely an awesome feature.
One mistake I think Foursquare made was that their MVP and/or product guidance was too minimal. A lot of my friends have abandoned the product because they didn't see enough initial value. I felt the same thing at first. "I checked-in, now what?" Their social features are only good if you have friends on the service, that are active, AND live in the same area. Their explore, radar, and lists features are awesome, but they came a bit too late and their website is only now catching up to the mobile experience. I also think they still have work to do on the social aspect.
Foursquare is optimized for densely populated urban areas (They are based in NYC), so I'm not sure if it'll reach critical mass like Facebook/Twitter, however, those are still substantial markets. I see it doing very well in Europe.
Re: Is Foursquare in trouble?
#13Re: Is Foursquare in trouble?
#14An interesting point is made by George Colony (of Forrester research) about social media saturation.
And the need for more utility per unit time, for success in the social domain,
Re: Is Foursquare in trouble?
#15I'm from the UK and have been using 4sq for just over a year. I use it mainly for the gaming aspect between friends (about 4-5 friends, who live in the same area), i also like using it to see what my friends are up to, where they are going/eating/drinking etc.
Re: Is Foursquare in trouble?
#16i don't think so.
i don't want to flood my facebook friends with checkins everynow and then. That's why i use foursquare. it is specialized for discovering places and know where your friends are.
foursquare is not a feature, it is an experience. Foursquare is for checkins like instagram is for photos or Google maps for maps. Since facebook has photo sharing,it does not mean instagram is in trouble. when you are really good at what you do, it does not matter. Foursquare really matters for cities. in 5 years from now, almost everyone will have a smartphone and people will(already are) start adding more useful digital information to real world places. These informations are going to be their assest. in longterm,foursquare is going to be huge if they execute in the right way.
Re: Is Foursquare in trouble?
#17I'm in Europe. I used to use Foursquare but stopped. Reasons:
- No deals (apparently in U.S. stores use this more often).
- Hardly any people use it (I think four of my FB connections use it, but they hardly update it. Facebook is a much better way of letting friends know where I am and it's easy for them to reach back with comment or msg.)
- Locations are double/triple counted (it's very weird, but where do I check in?)
These are just my views, don't know what other users in Europe think.
Re: Is Foursquare in trouble?
#18Is Foursquare in trouble? Of course they are. Checking in is, as this post suggests, merely a feature (of Facebook). When it was rumored that Facebook made a buyout offer my opinion was they should've taken it. Now? The best outcome I see for Foursquare is a talent acquisition.
Yeah, I never really got the value of a service like Foursquare when social networks allowed you to share all of this information already. The checking in feature is clever but at least for me doesn't solve any yet-unsolved problem. (Additionally, I didn't like the idea of publishing my location at various times of the day, but that could just be my own paranoia.)
I think the average user might be looking at Foursquare and thinking, "OK, what else?" They need to provide a good answer to that question.
Re: Is Foursquare in trouble?
#19Not at all, they are mobile, and social, and location based. All they need now is coupons.
Buzz words do not a viable service make.
But it's important to get the order of the buzzwords correct, otherwise investors will know you're bullshitting them. Is Foursquare a location-based social network with real-time context-aware recommendations? Or is Foursquare a cloud-based social recommendations app with location-aware analytics?
If they get the order right they might have a chance to get more funding.
Re: Is Foursquare in trouble?
#20i don't think so. i don't want to flood my facebook friends with checkins everynow and then. That's why i use foursquare. it is specialized for discovering places and know where your friends are. foursquare is not a feature, it is an experience. Foursquare is for checkins like instagram is for photos or Google maps for maps. Since facebook has photo sharing,it does not mean instagram is in trouble. when you are reall…
What I see from my friends is that they use Facebook and Twitter constantly. However every month they pick a new favorite social, local, photo app to play with. One month it is Instagram, next it is Foursquare, then Path. But they don't stick with this 3rd app. They use it merely as a toy that they eventually get bored with and throw away. So yeah, I think Instagram might be in trouble too.