5 ms·

i talked to him yesterday to ask him where the badges came from since that's one of the most popular features of foursquare. he left google on a friday and join

by jmtame 16y ago

i talked to him yesterday to ask him where the badges came from since that's one of the most popular features of foursquare. he left google on a friday and joined areacode on a monday which is a company that builds games (now part of zynga). he said he worked on an application called shark runners (http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/sharkweek/shark-runners/shark-runners.html http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/sharkweek/shark-runners...) which was a fun way to encourage people to act like marine biologists (study sharks). that specific app used achievements and is what inspired the badges in foursquare. i also found it interesting that despite foursquare being 2 years old as of next week and having >7 million users (by comparison, facebook had 6 million users at 2 years) he still doesn't consider foursquare a success at all and worries about the company failing every day. he said his girlfriend told him his face was breaking out because he tends to put his hands on his face when he's stressed out.

rexf 16y ago
> i also found it interesting that despite foursquare being 2 years old as of next week and having >7 million users (by comparison, facebook had 6 million users at 2 years) he still doesn't consider foursquare a success at all and worries about the company failing every day. I find that interesting as well. Most people would consider Foursquare at least 'successful enough' with widespread adoption and some revenue stream. Foursquare also gets nonstop press and a rival incorporated their API (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/02/gowalla-3-foursquare-facebook-twitter/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/02/gowalla-3-foursquare-facebo...). That said, worrying about survival everyday is a good startup mentality to have. There are big players (Fb places, Google Lattitude? / Google-whatever-they-have-coming-down-the-pipeline) and possible upsets (such as http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/14/mytown-booyah-location-iphone/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/14/mytown-booyah-location-ipho...) ever looming.

by jmtame 16y ago

rexf 16y ago

> i also found it interesting that despite foursquare being 2 years old as of next week and having >7 million users (by comparison, facebook had 6 million users at 2 years) he still doesn't consider foursquare a success at all and worries about the company failing every day. I find that interesting as well. Most people would consider Foursquare at least 'successful enough' with widespread adoption and some revenue stream. Foursquare also gets nonstop press and a rival incorporated their API (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/02/gowalla-3-foursquare-facebook-twitter/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/02/gowalla-3-foursquare-facebo...). That said, worrying about survival everyday is a good startup mentality to have. There are big players (Fb places, Google Lattitude? / Google-whatever-they-have-coming-down-the-pipeline) and possible upsets (such as http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/14/mytown-booyah-location-iphone/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/14/mytown-booyah-location-ipho...) ever looming.