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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

#141

Post by jarin »

varunjuice wrote: post #139
mangeletti wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For those who don't know, Burbn is now known as Instagram.

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

#142

Post by lavamantis »

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…

Because of your #3, that means they had some time. Rather than torpedo something that was still a bit of a success, if no longer a moon shot, they could have innovated something new alongside the existing product. Either a compelling new feature or a separate product that was able to leverage their huge data set. Their users were delighted by the existing product, but they ignored their users in order to go with the torpedo route. Clearly they had never read anything by Paul Graham?

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

#143

Post by ghaff »

raverbashing wrote: post #111
arbitrage wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 positiv…

The average won't necessarily be systematically skewed but a couple of random (or not so random) reviews of a restaurant or a service means they're not worth much. (Obviously it's somewhat different when the reviewer is an "expert" critic but even then they're outliers.) Out where I live the restaurants, such as they are, don't get a lot of reviews on Yelp so the results don't mean a lot.

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

#144

Post by juliangregorian »

achompas wrote: post #137
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…

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).

Yes, I think you're probably right. I noticed after the fact that they mentioned "hundreds of machines" and I was estimating more towards "dozens of machines".

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

#145

Post by rock8y »

I am one of the users who stopped using Foursquare when the new version was released but for different reason.

When I was about to check in on my visit to a nearby mall, it said in my feed,my friend was there too. I texted him if he wanted to catch up for a beer after shopping. When we met up and ended up realizing that he never checked in but still showed up on my list, I decided to stop using Foursquare atm. I never knew if it was a bug or intended feature.

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

#146

Post by gdilla »

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…

True, they should have made Swarm their new Yelp clone or whatever their curated travel guide strategy was, instead of gouging the flagship app that had popularized the check-in for 10s of millions of active users. It was such a departure and made no sense branding wise. I mean I guess they wanted to associate their company name with the money making version of their app (if this strategy worked out) but still... it was oddly done. A lot of bouncing back and forth between two apps (check in on swarm, look at tips on FS?!).

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

#147

Post by polynomial »

mwexler wrote: post #115

Can't help but to note this other story popping up at the same time: Yahoo! in talks to buy Foursquare... http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/sources-yahoo-in-talks-to-b...

If Yahoo plays their cards right, they could become a hodgepodge of various features that other competing platforms -notably facebook- do much better and in a more integrated fashion.

Maybe they could also make a play in the Meerkat/Periscope space while they're at it.

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

#148

Post by daretorant »

What many are missing is that they transitioned from a consumer company to an infrastructure company. Their location database (and API) was just announced by Twitter as the backing for all location handling in tweets. That's a big freaking deal, especially given they already do that for Facebook.

If you read the FS CEO's comments about the Twitter thing, you'll notice he mentions they have basically focused on what their main value prop is: solving the difficult problem of accurate and quality locations.

The consumer apps are just something they "still do" but I certainly don't think they consider it their primary business model anymore.

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

#149

Post by timr »

pappyo wrote: post #75
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…

You need to talk to small business owners in any service industry that isn't restauranting. Those owners would consider the business practices of Yelp and (I guess) Foursquare thuggish. Two years ago I sat in on a call with a Yelp rep with a former employer of mine (small business connected to the real estate industry). The Yelp rep said "Advertising through Yelp will almost instantly increase you rating." My employe…

See, this illustrates the fallacy of the "yelp extortion" argument: what the rep said was totally clear -- when you advertise, your rating gets better. It did not imply that your rating gets better because they'll change it. That was your leap to an unsupported conclusion.

Moreover, assuming that s/he did say what you're quoting, you have to put it in context: Yelp employs hundreds (if not thousands now) of telephone sales reps. They get paid crap, work in a call center, and have zero ability to influence anyone, anywhere. Sales people, when incentivized to say things for money, tend to walk as close to the ethical line as they can without going over. I haven't looked, but there probably is data showing that advertising increases your rating. It wouldn't surprise me.

Every time I've bothered to dig into these claims, it's a story like yours, where a business leapt to a conclusion because they thought they heard something that validated a rumor they read on the interwebz.

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

#150

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…

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