Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by codingdave » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:26 PM UTC

jim_greco wrote: post #80

It's a good lesson on just how difficult building a startup is. - Crowley built this product before and sold it to Google. - Foursquare was an overnight phenomenon and had great user engagement. People were addicted to this app! - They raised a ton of VC money and were able to hire some of the best engineers in NY. - They're still struggling to build a sustainable business model.

Your last bullet point is really the only one that matters.

I know my comments are repeating themselves, but if your business plan does not includes actual transactions that generate actual revenue, then you are not a business, you are a gamble.

The days of "Get traffic and it will all work out in the end" are over. Way over.

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

#122

Post by juliangregorian » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:27 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #114

juliangregorian wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

More armchair quarterbacking. You don't just pick up and move to save a buck when you have a whole company running on AWS' specialized architecture. There's a lot of process and a lot of overhead that factor into that consideration. A lifelong Mac user, for example, couldn't seamlessly jump into Windows just because "it's cheaper".

Even if you ran on bare metal on colocation, I doubt you save more than 50%. That's time wasted that could be more fruitfully spent iterating on profitable ideas. Plus that's exactly why you took investment capital in the first place, so you didn't have to do all that fiddly stuff. It's always better to maximize revenue than to minimize costs. On that note, the cost of paying all those salaries is probably 10-50x the Amazon bill, but you can't really cheap out there either.

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

#123

Post by juliangregorian » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:30 PM UTC

smackfu wrote: post #120

juliangregorian wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really, because for a lot of NY tech companies the office is a significant selling point for potential employees, and they do community events there that raise the brand's clout. Nobody wants to go work in a basement in Harlem when they can do the same work for Facebook and have a skylight and yoga balls.

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

#124

Post by untog » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #84

untog wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how everyone in this thread is saying they needed a monetisation strategy but no one has suggested one. Maybe there just isn't a business in check ins.

How about "be acquired by Google."

There are rumours today about them being acquired by Yahoo: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/sources-yahoo-in-talks-to-b...

Makes the timing of this post interesting.

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

#125

Post by taigeair » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

Personally I use Foursquare most when I'm travelling or in new places. I complement it with TripAdvisor. Foursquare could do what TripAdvisor does better.

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

#126

Post by binoyxj » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:36 PM UTC

Foursquare pretty much 'Digg'-ed their own grave. Oh snap!

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

#127

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:37 PM UTC

moe wrote: post #117

juliangregorian wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#128

Post by furyg3 » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:39 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #100

josephmx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if they had monetised in a way that isn't changing their entire app then they would have been more likely to stay successful. This change was poorly thought out and probably wasn't going to be successful, same as if Twitter spun their micro-blogging to another app, it wouldn't end well.

> This change was poorly thought out What's your evidence for that? I could entirely believe they thought it through very carefully, knew that this was a likely outcome, and did it anyhow because it was the best chance they saw for success. Remember, this is the third checkin app in this series. It started life as a student project. The first commercial version was Dodgeball [1], which was created, grown, and purchas…

This logic blows my mind.

Winning back your penny at the penny slots isn't the result you're playing for, but it's a better result than losing the penny.

I don't know the details of the FourSquare pivot, and hindsight is 20/20, but if I had even a small chance at medium-to-long term profitability (good brand, loyal followers, but flat growth), and a minuscule chance at riches by burning down the building, I wouldn't light the match.

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

#129

Post by TylerH » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:40 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #84

untog wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how everyone in this thread is saying they needed a monetisation strategy but no one has suggested one. Maybe there just isn't a business in check ins.

How about "be acquired by Google."

Google has to want you for that to happen.

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

#130

Post by joshuapants » Wed, Apr 15, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #85

joshuapants wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really the leadership that failed? Their product was popular, but I can't see any way they could make money on it. I don't think that means the leadership was bad, I think it means the product was inherently un-monetizable.

Well, who came up with this un-monetizable product then?

That's a fair point, but I read the parent post as complaining that the leadership couldn't squeeze blood from a stone, not that they came up with a non-commercial product in the first place.