can't resist
Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins
171–178 of 178 posts
Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You are incorrect.
What the Yelp rep said was not clear. The Yelp rep didn't answer the question my former employer had. She avoided it. Does that mean Yelp was/is up to something nefarious? No. But it has that appearance.
And that's the point. Yelp can, in fact, be doing absolutely nothing wrong as far as their data is concerned. But small business owners don't see that. All they see is aggressive Yelp sales agents, and a better rating if they advertise through Yelp.
It's an image problem, not a data problem.
Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You are incorrect. What the Yelp rep said was not clear. The Yelp rep didn't answer the question my former employer had. She avoided it. Does that mean Yelp was/is up to something nefarious? No. But it has that appearance. And that's the point. Yelp can, in fact, be doing absolutely nothing wrong as far as their data is concerned. But small business owners don't see that. All they see is aggressive Yelp sales agents,…
The rep said a very specific thing, and you interpreted it incorrectly.
Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins
#174The funny thing is, I bet a graph of their profits would be totally different. Companies like Yelp and Foursquare are actually in the blackmail business. They needed the users to achieve a massive amount of reviews. Now they just collect "protection money" from business to remove / prevent bad reviews and laugh all the way to the bank. At least, that is the only way I can see their move making any kind of sense.
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…
> not familiar with the platform...
> I've never seen a place with an undeserved good/bad reputation.
I'm glad that Yelp reviewers biases coincide with somebodies, but they don't coincide with mine. I basically ignore the star rating at this point.
Why? Customer service. Some restaurants have absolutely delicious food yet take pride in having poor poor customer service, and frequently lose points for that.
Guess what, Yelp?
I don't care about poor customer service. I have two questions about a restaurant: how good is the food, and how much does it cost?
For the 5-star rating system to be useful, I should be able to compare two restaurants and simply pick the one with the higher rating. Sadly that often leads to worse food.
So if I'm trying to use Yelp as anything more advanced than a restaurant directory, I end up reading each review, and then the reviewer's reviews of other places to get to know each reviewer's rating system, how they feel about restaurants I already know, and this inevitably takes far more time and effort than I care to.
Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins
#175Earlier 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…
Take a look at this Yelp business: http://www.yelp.com/biz/morgan-automotive-portland It has 33 5-star reviews that are "unapproved", and eight 1-star promoted reviews that amount to a 2 star overall rating. I'd say that's an undeserved bad reputation. And no matter how many good reviews there are, the 1-star ratings are still the only ones weighing in. In comparison, Google review page has a near perfect 5-star non-…
Thanks for this example
I see 1 5-star, 4 2-stars, 3 1-star, the rest is closed
Now, if you see the hidden reviews, there are a lot of "5-star" ones (which are really 3 or 4 star) but a lot of 1-star ones as well
A lot of them are from people with a few friends (however, a lot of them seem to come from "high-quality" posters)
Well, Yelp better watch out if Google can give a better result
Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Which person are you projecting yourself onto here?
The CEO doesn't have that choice. He'll get replaced by the investors.
The VC investors don't have that choice. It's not their money they're working with. They've promised their investors, the limited partners, that they'll go after high risk, high reward scenarios. If they don't make those gambles, they won't get the capital needed to run.
The limited partners also don't generally have that choice with this money. They are people who manage large pools of cash, and part of what they need is long-term, high-reward investments, which are necessarily high risk. [1] They have other money in safe, low-return investments. This money is for go-big-or-go-home bets.
This is the devil's bargain people make when they take VC money. There are other ways to build businesses, but they aren't the kind that will let you spend $100m-2b before you get to break-even, which is apparently what it takes to build a social network.
[1] http://www.theequitykicker.com/2010/12/01/where-do-vcs-get-t...
Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins
#177That is not a graph of the Foursquare app's popularity. It's a graph of Google searches. It was in trouble before it split the apps. Lots of searches are driven by news stories, including bad news stories. For example the marker D is a story about how Foursquare resorted to raising debt financing to avoid a down round. It's a mistake to label that "SUCCESS".
Here's an actual graph of Foursquare's popularity, showing growth in 2009: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallofhair/4232092914/
BTW, the first time I followed your link, Flickr redirected me to an ad for a Flickr app for an operating system I don’t use. You might want to find new hosting for your images.
Re: Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, really. Events, in order: 1. Swarm released 2. New 4sq released The article talks about 2 then 1, implying incorrectly that new 4sq was released, people got pissed off, then swarm was released. I don't think anybody is arguing that it wasn't part of the pivot. I specifically am calling them out for implying 4sq was reacting to users who were pissed off with their new app, when their new app wasn't yet released.…
I think you are confusing the initial statement. Foursquare perceived users as "frustrated" before Swarm because of the conflation of reviews and check-ins with in a single app. The pivot was to create a new app and separate the concerns.
I think you're looking on their writing favourably.