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I have a friend that's worked at Foursquare for a long time. Hopefully this new pivot works out for them. I'm not sure I understand what they've pivoted to tho

I have a friend that's worked at Foursquare for a long time. Hopefully this new pivot works out for them. I'm not sure I understand what they've pivoted to though. It seems as if they're providing location data to customers like Apple?

barretts 11y ago
They're selling location trend data to anyone who will buy it. Retail operators (like Apple) may buy it, but the more typical customers for these types of services are hedge funds and other traders who want an edge. They'll correlate check-in volume with iPhone sales, for instance, to more accurately estimate Apple's quarterly revenues before they're announced.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > They're selling location trend data to anyone who will buy it. Is this the same trend data Google is showing in location search engine results? https://support.google.com/business/answer/6263531?hl=en https://support.google.com/business/answer/6263531?hl=en > Popular times > Google Search shows users the most popular times for some of their favorite businesses and institutions. When users search for places like a restaurant, bar, or gym on Google, they’ll see when their destination typically draws the largest crowds. > To determine popular times, Google uses data from users who have chosen to store their location information on Google servers. Popular times are based on average popularity over the last several weeks. Not all businesses will have a popular times graph; the graph will only appear for businesses whose hours are listed on Google and about which Google has sufficient popularity data.
  - barretts 11y ago
    > Is this the same trend data Google is showing in location search engine results? Very similar idea, but different source (4SQ app versus Android/Google apps). Also I'd imagine the 4SQ enterprise offering has a lot more ways to slice and dice the data so that it's useful for business.
mpdehaan2 11y ago
Thoughts: Is the quality of the trend data they are selling going to go down with less users using FourSquare every day? Or are they going to buy and sell location data from other people, possibly providing some data and analysis layer on top of it? It was a little unclear on the article, but I'd be curious why a VC dropped $45M if they think the FourSquare checkin rate is trending to zero AND the new value is caught up in them doing something with location data, unless that location data is coming from somewhere else?

barretts 11y ago

They're selling location trend data to anyone who will buy it. Retail operators (like Apple) may buy it, but the more typical customers for these types of services are hedge funds and other traders who want an edge. They'll correlate check-in volume with iPhone sales, for instance, to more accurately estimate Apple's quarterly revenues before they're announced.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> They're selling location trend data to anyone who will buy it. Is this the same trend data Google is showing in location search engine results? https://support.google.com/business/answer/6263531?hl=en https://support.google.com/business/answer/6263531?hl=en > Popular times > Google Search shows users the most popular times for some of their favorite businesses and institutions. When users search for places like a restaurant, bar, or gym on Google, they’ll see when their destination typically draws the largest crowds. > To determine popular times, Google uses data from users who have chosen to store their location information on Google servers. Popular times are based on average popularity over the last several weeks. Not all businesses will have a popular times graph; the graph will only appear for businesses whose hours are listed on Google and about which Google has sufficient popularity data.
- barretts 11y ago
  > Is this the same trend data Google is showing in location search engine results? Very similar idea, but different source (4SQ app versus Android/Google apps). Also I'd imagine the 4SQ enterprise offering has a lot more ways to slice and dice the data so that it's useful for business.

mpdehaan2 11y ago

Thoughts: Is the quality of the trend data they are selling going to go down with less users using FourSquare every day? Or are they going to buy and sell location data from other people, possibly providing some data and analysis layer on top of it? It was a little unclear on the article, but I'd be curious why a VC dropped $45M if they think the FourSquare checkin rate is trending to zero AND the new value is caught up in them doing something with location data, unless that location data is coming from somewhere else?