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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

#51

Post by matthewmacleod »

onion2k wrote: post #34
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 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. If it's as easy as you believe they wouldn't have pivoted. Perhaps they know something you don't. Or perhaps there's still a massive opportunity there. I don't know. And how do you possibly convince yourself that movi…

If it's as easy as you believe they wouldn't have pivoted.

I don't think that follows. People and organisations make mistakes all the time; it's equally possible that Foursquare made a bad decision here.

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

#53

Post by _asummers »

mtbcoder wrote: post #22
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?

Has anyone been able to successfully monetize check-ins? It seems that if it were that straight forward to monetize as you suggest, someone would have done this by now. Even Facebook's check-in system seems to have faded in popularity as far as I can tell.

Facebook checkins that I see on my wall are usually limited to "I want to brag about the good food I'm eating without Instagramming a picture of it, so I'll just check in at the restaurant". I don't think people trust Facebook enough to overtly give it access to more important location data, or I could just have too much faith in the average FB user.

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

#54

Post by nc »

I'm surprised foursquare didn't go into payments, they have the venue data, merchant relationships, they could do what Reserve (from expa) is doing and radically improve the experience of dealing with any local business.

Booking a haircut, paying for your meal all taken care of by foursquare.

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

#55

Post by acheron »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #45
thefreeman wrote: post #37

The 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.

Now they just collect "protection money" from business to remove / prevent bad reviews I hope you have some kind of evidence for that, because it's a pretty serious accusation to throw around.

If you're talking specifically about Foursquare, I dunno, but pretty much any news story about Yelp in the past decade covers it, e.g. http://consumerist.com/2014/04/04/yelps-controversial-busine...

"The number of complaints might not come as a surprise to those who have followed the numerous lawsuits and allegations of extorting money from businesses to remove negative reviews."

"For years, businesses have claimed that negative reviews pop-up on their Yelp pages after they’ve declined to purchase advertising with the company."

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

#56

Post by nailer »

From the article:

> In attempt to placate frustrated users, Foursquare launched "Swarm," a separate check-in app with minimal features, removing most of what made the original Foursquare app great. "

This sentence is provably incorrect. FourSquare launched Swarm before their pivot, there were no 'frustrated users' at that time because their main app still did checkins. The article makes it sound like FourSquare were reacting to pissed of customers. They weren't - they foresee people who liked checkins and always accommodated them.

Not a frequent 4sq user but for me the app is more relevant now - it pops up useful nearby stuff that I might like as I wander around London, so far its suggestions are pretty good.

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

#57

Post by und3rw4t3rp00ps »

josephmx wrote: post #33
dagw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have two options. One will leave you bankrupt within a year or two with probability 1.0 and one will leave you bankrupt within year or two with probability 0.8. Which would you chose?

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.

IMHO - Dens is a romantic dude. He has just as many conceptual aspirations as he does commercial ones. Power users of 4sq. turn their worlds into farmville - mindlessly checking in everywhere they go (i.e. "home", "gym", "home" etc.). He wanted to disassociate the brand from that activity, and emphasize the utility of check ins (i.e. who else is here, how popular is that etc.).

Could he have done this in a more elegant way? Maybe. But either way, the data he has compiled to entice advertisers is already quite substantial. If he successfully rebrands 4sq. as a resource and swarm as a tool, he's done exactly what he wanted to do.. as opposed to something close/safer.

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

#58

Post by briandear »

fsk wrote: post #42

My sister used to be a foursquare addict. She no longer uses it. They took out all the stuff she liked.

My wife and I too.. We had a record of our of travels from about 2010 until Swarm happened. All over the word, even desert outposts in Mongolia. We loved it. I used to use it to find places in off the beaten path towns. It was fun being the mayor of a little tea house in the middle of nowhere and it was fun stealing NYC mayoralships when much of the hipsters headed to South-by. Now, I just use Tripadvisor which isn't as fun. I'll still see faded Foursquare stickers on businesses (next to their LevelUp stickers..) Maybe if 4sq hadn't spent huge amounts of money on prime Soho office space and instead opened regional sales offices to get small businesses to do self-serve ads and promos, the perhaps that company would have had a chance.

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

#59

Post by slowmotiony »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #45
thefreeman wrote: post #37

The 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.

Now they just collect "protection money" from business to remove / prevent bad reviews I hope you have some kind of evidence for that, because it's a pretty serious accusation to throw around.

Are you serious? Every yelp-like site, including the very local ones, works like this. It's not a big secret.

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

#60

Post by wodenokoto »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #45
thefreeman wrote: post #37

The 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.

Now they just collect "protection money" from business to remove / prevent bad reviews I hope you have some kind of evidence for that, because it's a pretty serious accusation to throw around.

It is also a very common accusation. It's almost a monthly recurring story that some business decline an ad sales person from yelp only to see their review plummeting.
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