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It's sad how many mistakes they've made with foursquare along the way. The checkin thing was fun, then they moved the only fun part of the app to a mostly negle
by chadlavi 7y ago
It's sad how many mistakes they've made with foursquare along the way. The checkin thing was fun, then they moved the only fun part of the app to a mostly neglected junk drawer secondary app (Swarm) and turned the name brand app into just another yelp.
Now it seems it's just going to double/triple-down on the data mining part, and there's no clear indication of what value this adds to the user.
The only thing I really use Swarm for is to keep a little calendar-integrated diary of places I've been (with an IFTTT), but I can do all this myself much simpler and with less data mining. So long, 4SQ.
- uptown 7y ago"there's no clear indication of what value this adds to the user" The user is no longer the people checking-in. The user are the firms capable of writing large checks to buy insight into market trends before anyone else sees them.
- bonzini 7y agoIf you don't bring value or fun to the person checking in, they get bored and you get less data to sell.
- uptown 7y agoThat's why you're now tracked without ever formally checking in.
- mrgreenfur 7y agoYeah, pretty sure they get all this data by piggybacking their SDK into free apps.
- arkanciscan 7y agoWhich apps?
- alwayseasy 7y agoMost apps that are not Google or Facebook owned: Twitter, Uber, TripAdvisor, AccuWeather etc
- vikramkr 7y agoBut everyone can do that to an extent, so what keeps their edge, that they're first and are on a lot of devices? Having a strong social aspect might let them get differentiated insights on what people enjoy etc, but otherwise location data is almost a commodity
- whoisjuan 7y agoThe original 4SQ was awesome, but it was also absolutely non-viable (no business model whatsoever, besides selling branded badges to advertisers). Putting aside the nature of their current business, I really admire 4SQ ability to pivot and re-invent itself several times, while keeping beloved functionality like the check-in (even if it’s through another app). This is a company that by all measures should have died in any of those past struggles. They even had a couple of down rounds. And somehow they managed to overcome all those dead-ends. Very few startups have done that, and I can’t think of a single one that did it at 4SQ’s scale.
- chadlavi 7y agoYeah, as a business they've been amazingly resilient. I just wish the product was still fun/worthwhile.
- barneygale 7y agoThis is like saluting Aung San Suu Kyi for being able to pivot to genocide. I'm not going to give a company any plaudits for selling personal data to advertisers, no matter what their starting point.
- enobrev 7y agoIt's nothing like that. I agree that selling personal data shouldn't be applauded but that is a ridiculous analogy. (you seem to have been downvoted - wasn't me)
- randomsearch 7y agoCould the original 4SQ have become the universal loyalty card?
- arkanciscan 7y agoI use Swarm in a similar way; as a diary. Since FourSquare seems to have abandoned that use-case I wonder if there's a better product to be built.
- freyfogle 7y agoLots of creative things could be done for that use case, the challenge is getting (and maintaining) a usable/affordable database of places.