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Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

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Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

#111

Post by raverbashing »

arbitrage wrote: post #78
raverbashing wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this myth being repeated, but it's clear it comes from people not familiar with the platform I've never seen a place with an undeserved good/bad reputation. And I've seen a lot of reviews from those sites (and went to those places) As the number of reviews increase the "I'll never go back to this place" begins to show, but they're compensated by good reviews. Now, systematic bad reviews usually mean there is an…

> I've never seen a place with an undeserved good/bad reputation. I've seen dozens. It happens in smaller towns, and smaller markets in large cities.

Well, if you have few reviews the average is going to be skewed.

Now, Yelp is a marketing tool, it brings people in, if there's already an established customer base, it's irrelevant, same thing if it's a "Maltese Falcon specialist", the market between specialists and service buyers is so small that people don't even bother with a review.

And even that is skewed by the ones that reject everything, and the fake positive reviews (and people with no idea on what they're reviewing)

Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

#112

Post by roel_v »

bandrami wrote: post #95
roel_v wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If your app name has become a verb the last thing you ever want to do is refocus." What? If you don't make money, you will go bankrupt . You can be a verb all you want, if it doesn't make money, it doesn't matter .

Ah, you fell for it too. How much does it actually cost to run the foursquare that millions of users liked? Hint: not very much. If you can't make that "not very much" back from ads, you should sell to someone who can.

"How much does it actually cost to run the foursquare that millions of users liked?

Hint: not very much."

OK, why don't you enlighten us?

Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

#113

Post by wpietri »

bandrami wrote: post #107
wpietri wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you settle for barely breaking even, your investors will replace you with somebody who believes they can take your company and have a chance of making ridiculous money. They will do that even if it is a 20% of wild success and an 80% chance that you will drive away the millions of users. Why? Because merely covering core operational costs doesn't do anything to pay back the investors who put in $160 million.

Why do you have "investors" with a low-margin, low-cost business model?

I'm having trouble understanding what you want to know here. Is this whole VC funding thing new to you?

Assuming so, the short answer is that the venture capital ecosystem is about investing in businesses before we know what kind of businesses they'll turn out to be. This was especially true for free-to-use social apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. Those only make sufficient money if their scale is very large. It's also hard to know what their true monetization opportunities are until they reach scale, which is why Twitter and Facebook didn't really bother with pursuing revenue until they were huge.

This worked out pretty well for the winners. But it has a known failure mode for the losers: things that might have been good small businesses end up getting totally destroyed in the rush for glory and riches.

Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

#114

Post by [deleted] »

juliangregorian wrote: post #106
bandrami wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, you fell for it too. How much does it actually cost to run the foursquare that millions of users liked? Hint: not very much. If you can't make that "not very much" back from ads, you should sell to someone who can.

Ha. Hahaha. How many apps at that scale have you run? Foursquare is on AWS[0] and serves 40 million users. Their monthly spend there is probably at least in the 10-20k range. And this is before even considering that they had 135 employees at the time[1] and swank offices in a hip neighborhood in NY. Making all that back with "ads", especially when your platform is almost completely on mobile, is not a cakewalk. 0: ht…

[deleted]

Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

#116

Post by codingdave »

josephmx wrote: post #20
roel_v wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If your app name has become a verb the last thing you ever want to do is refocus." What? If you don't make money, you will go bankrupt . You can be a verb all you want, if it doesn't make money, it doesn't matter .

If your monetisation attempt kills your app, you will go bankrupt and it is a failure.

If you grow so big that you are verb, and yet still have not monetized, then you had a deep flaw in your business plan from day one.

Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

#117

Post by moe »

juliangregorian wrote: post #106
bandrami wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, you fell for it too. How much does it actually cost to run the foursquare that millions of users liked? Hint: not very much. If you can't make that "not very much" back from ads, you should sell to someone who can.

Ha. Hahaha. How many apps at that scale have you run? Foursquare is on AWS[0] and serves 40 million users. Their monthly spend there is probably at least in the 10-20k range. And this is before even considering that they had 135 employees at the time[1] and swank offices in a hip neighborhood in NY. Making all that back with "ads", especially when your platform is almost completely on mobile, is not a cakewalk. 0: ht…

they had 135 employees at the time[1] and swank offices in a hip neighborhood in NY. Making all that back with "ads", especially when your platform is almost completely on mobile, is not a cakewalk.

How about firing 120 employees and moving to a smaller office, just until you've figured out how to make money?

Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

#118

Post by bdcravens »

bandrami wrote: post #107
wpietri wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you settle for barely breaking even, your investors will replace you with somebody who believes they can take your company and have a chance of making ridiculous money. They will do that even if it is a 20% of wild success and an 80% chance that you will drive away the millions of users. Why? Because merely covering core operational costs doesn't do anything to pay back the investors who put in $160 million.

Why do you have "investors" with a low-margin, low-cost business model?

You're describing pretty much every B2C startup ever. Many of which I promise you're using today.

Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

#119

Post by bdcravens »

raverbashing wrote: post #39
DevX101 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wildly successful app Foursquare didn't agree. They didn't pivot just because it's the cool thing to do.

> Foursquare didn't agree Maybe the millions of users actively making check-ins every day weren't too big of a clue for them? They needed a monetization strategy, you pivot when your product is not being used.

popularity != success

Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins

#120

Post by smackfu »

juliangregorian wrote: post #106
bandrami wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, you fell for it too. How much does it actually cost to run the foursquare that millions of users liked? Hint: not very much. If you can't make that "not very much" back from ads, you should sell to someone who can.

Ha. Hahaha. How many apps at that scale have you run? Foursquare is on AWS[0] and serves 40 million users. Their monthly spend there is probably at least in the 10-20k range. And this is before even considering that they had 135 employees at the time[1] and swank offices in a hip neighborhood in NY. Making all that back with "ads", especially when your platform is almost completely on mobile, is not a cakewalk. 0: ht…

When the parent comment is asking "how much does it REALLY cost to run the site", I don't see how them having to pay for swanky offices is much of a rebuttal.
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