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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

#131

Post by mmccaff »

Removing check-ins was a strange move, given that it was what made Foursquare Foursquare. Personally, I didn't want to install Swarm in the same way that I didn't want to install Facebook Messenger. I had the same feeling of not trusting the reasoning behind splitting the functionality into two apps, and in Foursquare's case - Foursquare no longer did what I had bought into, and I was already in the habit of using Yelp for looking up reviews, so I stopped using it.

They took over $162 million in funding, and I'd bet that a lot of people had a lot of ideas on how to turn things around monetization-wise. They had to try something, but this pivot seemed pretty detached from understanding their users.

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

#132

Post by RandallBrown »

m4tthumphrey wrote: post #47

I am so happy about this, I've been waiting for some news on the subject for a while. I LOVED checking in to foursquare, the main reason was so I could, one day, use their API to visualise where I'd been the most/what time etc. I was GUTTED when they removed check-ins.

They didn't really remove checkins, they just moved them into a new app (Swarm).

There's still a checkin button in Foursquare that launches Swarm. Saying Foursquare got rid of checkins is like saying Facebook got rid of Messenger. They didn't, they just moved it to a new app.

It's true, they did (mostly) remove the gamification aspect of checkins. It was fun competing with my friends for getting the most points. Now, you just can compete for stuff like most restaurants, most night life spots, etc.

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

#133

Post by jim_greco »

codingdave wrote: post #121
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.

How do you know what Foursquare's business plan was? Foursquare raised a Series D. They didn't go into that pitch telling VCs that they're just getting traffic and they'll worry about monetization later.

Struggling to build a sustainable business model is not the same thing as not having a business model. Again, it's difficult.

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

#134

Post by [deleted] »

bandrami wrote: post #9

I'm still astounded by this. They had a #&$%ing verb . That is the #&$%ing gold standard of presence. "I'm going to foursquare this." I actually heard real human beings say this. If your app name has become a verb the last thing you ever want to do is refocus . If you want to go to a ratings app like they apparently did (because... uh... that's not a saturated space or anything?...) then you make another app and leav…

[deleted]

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

#135

Post by Volscio »

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…

I felt this article was interesting regarding why and how they did it:

https://medium.com/@mrdavenport/swarm-branding-and-visual-de...

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

#136

Post by tim333 »

nodata wrote: post #66
gchokov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not making any money, just like before.

Great! So they're they losing less money?

And trying to sell to yhoo for $900m

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/sources-yahoo-in-talks-to-b...

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

#137

Post by achompas »

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…

Given their location data and technology stack, I wouldn't be surprised if you've underestimated their spend by an order of magnitude (eg. $100-200k/month, ~$1.2-2.4M/year).

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

#138

Post by bandrami »

emodendroket wrote: post #94
bandrami wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was impossible to monetize successfully No excuse. If you have a timestamped record of people's interactions with physical businesses and can't find a way to monetize that, sell to one of the thousands of people who can connect those dots pretty easily. And how do you possibly convince yourself that moving into an already-saturated market like ratings is going to help?

If I wanted that data, why would I pay instead of looking at it for free?

Because the data tree isn't available for free.

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

#139

Post by varunjuice »

mangeletti wrote: post #90
bandrami wrote: post #9

I'm still astounded by this. They had a #&$%ing verb . That is the #&$%ing gold standard of presence. "I'm going to foursquare this." I actually heard real human beings say this. If your app name has become a verb the last thing you ever want to do is refocus . If you want to go to a ratings app like they apparently did (because... uh... that's not a saturated space or anything?...) then you make another app and leav…

Firstly, when did http://cl.ly/image/192x1c3L3B0d become the model for success? What it really comes down to is this: 1. You're left with an app that has stagnated in market share for a number of years (even dropped a bit) 2. Your brand has been marginalized by Facebook's vertical integration of your primary feature 3. You have some money left (investment, revenue, whatever - I don't know about Foursquares's finances…

^^ This. It was a bet. Some times these things don't pay off.

A lot of folks were upset when a small app named Burbn removed a bunch of its features as well, after a year of stagnant growth.

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

#140

Post by achompas »

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.

Are you sure about that hint?

The AWS case study linked below

http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/foursquare/

mentions "stream[ing] hundreds of millions of daily application logs each day." These logs must be at least 0.5K w/ metadata (probably more), so we're talking about...what, 100GB/day of application logs? Alone?? You're not persisting those using cron + MySQL--they likely use Kafka/Kinesis, many threads/instances subscribing to topics, and a large, horizontally-scalable db or Redshift to manage them.

Note that I haven't even addressed querying those logs (I believe 4sq uses Hive, the case study mentions Tableau). That all costs money.

We also haven't mentioned reviews for their millions of locations, user auth, check-ins, app development (web/iOS/Android). Each of those is a problem for a company with a MM-level user base.

Do you have some kind of intimate knowledge of their monthly engineering costs?

EDIT: 4sq website says 2M legit businesses, 65M total places.

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