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Foursquare has to dangle a carrot for people to actually install and then use their apps. What's in it for them? Two+ years ago, I would see Foursquare check-in
by asd 11y ago
Foursquare has to dangle a carrot for people to actually install and then use their apps. What's in it for them? Two+ years ago, I would see Foursquare check-ins on my social media feeds daily. Lately, not so much. As the novelty of checking into places continues to wind down, their data will get more and more stale.
Why should a user click "Allow" when the app asks to "access your location even when you are not using the app?"
- potatolicious 11y agoDisclaimer: I don't work for Foursquare, but am fond of some people who do. Checking in is definitely pretty dead - but the personal value of Foursquare for me is that they track where I go without any input from me. You can view your "location history" in the app, and for me it's ~90% accurate, and this data can be used to improve recommendations. Anecdotally Foursquare's food/drink recommendations for me are far superior to Yelp and way less painful. I can trust the rating (Yelp's star ratings are a special kind of messed up hell) and the user-submitted tips is pretty great for quickly getting info on what to order and what to avoid. I can search Foursquare with a keyword and go to the top 3 results and have a 95%+ odds of really enjoying myself. I can't say the same for Yelp.
- adevine 11y ago> Checking in is definitely pretty dead - but the personal value of Foursquare for me is that they track where I go without any input from me. You can view your "location history" in the app, and for me it's ~90% accurate, and this data can be used to improve recommendations. Not sure about iOS, but every Android device can do this by default: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline https://www.google.com/maps/timeline.
- potatolicious 11y agoFoursquare's version of this is much more powerful, and IMO one of the actually valuable things they've created. I live/work/play in Manhattan where the density of businesses is extremely high, but even here Foursquare is able to tell the difference between the bar on the ground floor vs. a restaurant in the basement of the same building. The level of specificity they've been able to achieve is pretty spectacular. So it's not just a history of GPS coordinates or semi-educated guesses about which places you've been, it's a 90%+ accuracy list of actual establishments you've visited. That's pretty great. Looking at the Google page 6 of the last 10 places it guesses I've been are off the mark - most are just places I've walked past in the last day or two, and Foursquare almost never erroneously picks those up.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- roymurdock 11y agoWhat do you do with that data? If it's just used for tailoring recommendations, wouldn't it make more sense/be less invasive for the app to ask you for your top 5 restaurants, coffee shops, etc. You may go places you don't enjoy and never go back, but those would still end up factored into your recommendations with Foursquare.
- potatolicious 11y agoThe invasiveness is definitely a concern - but in my experience things that quiz you on preferences are rarely actually accurate. Honestly I'm not normally so liberal with sharing my location data, knowing actual people who work there probably tilted this in their favor. I'm not an expert in recommendation systems or anything, but just anecdotally it seems like the amount of real observed data needed to make actually accurate recommendations is pretty high, beyond the abilities of a short intro quiz. Though having experience building apps one concern is self-reporting vs. observation. Foursquare knows every place I go, not just the ones that deserve a pic on Facebook or a checkin. The problem with asking users for their top restaurants is that the responses you get will be more aspirational than real, and reflect who the user wants to be rather than their actual preferences. > " but those would still end up factored into your recommendations with Foursquare" On the history page you can mark places as "not liked", presumably this lessens or removes the impact of it. Definitely still some user interaction required - but it's IMO still a lot better than manually checking in, or using a completely unintelligent system.
- bigdubs 11y agoI still check in because it's a great way to keep a running diary of places I've been. I've been a user since 2009 and it's amazing to be able to go back 4 years and see what the awesome ramen place was in the LES I went to with XYZ.