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I have nothing against Foursquare, but this 'We copy no one' is a blatant lie. explore = copying yelp specials 2.0 = copying groupon Foursquare's vision appe

I have nothing against Foursquare, but this 'We copy no one' is a blatant lie. explore = copying yelp specials 2.0 = copying groupon Foursquare's vision appears to be looking backward. Dennis Crowley's been thinking about this space for 10 years?

harryh 15y ago
explore = Personalized recommendations just for you based on where you + your friends have been in the past. Lots more powerful than a generic suggestion. Think "You've been to Aquagrill a lot, maybe you'd also like Lure Fishbar down the street cause it's pretty similar." LOTS of work to be done on explore for those with a background in search quality, machine learning, statistics, or infrastructure. specials 2.0 = much more flexible than a one sized fits all groupon. Venue owners can create specials around frequency of visits, checking in with a bunch of other folks (friends or non friends), being the mayor, and many other criterion. We're also, as you may have seen with our recent AmEx announcement trying to integrate our merchant tools with 3rd parties to provide value to both users and merchants on the foursquare platform. We've got lots more coming down the pipe as well. "We copy no one" might be a bit overstated[1] but it really is how we try to think about things. Not everything we do is revolutionary, a lot is evolutionary as well. That's just the nature of building a real product. It can't all be mind blowing (but we try!). Even if we don't succeed 100% of the time at making things totally new and awesome, I think having that as a conscious goal is a good trait to have in a company. -harryh 1. I'll admit to being overly dramatic at times. Sorry about that.
- harryh 15y ago
  Really? Someone is down voting this? sadface
  - yid 15y ago
    Sounds a bit like hubris perhaps...
potatolicious 15y ago
> "explore = copying yelp" Oh come on, that's just disingenuous. That's like saying Netflix's recommendation system is ripping off IMDb - they're completely dissimilar features. One seeks to use reviews to generate a one-size-fits-all rating. All users get the same "recommendations" based on this data. The other seeks to match you with other user behavior in order to create personalized recommendations. I can't speak to how well Explore works (haven't used it much), but just conceptually it's completely different.

harryh 15y ago

explore = Personalized recommendations just for you based on where you + your friends have been in the past. Lots more powerful than a generic suggestion. Think "You've been to Aquagrill a lot, maybe you'd also like Lure Fishbar down the street cause it's pretty similar." LOTS of work to be done on explore for those with a background in search quality, machine learning, statistics, or infrastructure. specials 2.0 = much more flexible than a one sized fits all groupon. Venue owners can create specials around frequency of visits, checking in with a bunch of other folks (friends or non friends), being the mayor, and many other criterion. We're also, as you may have seen with our recent AmEx announcement trying to integrate our merchant tools with 3rd parties to provide value to both users and merchants on the foursquare platform. We've got lots more coming down the pipe as well. "We copy no one" might be a bit overstated[1] but it really is how we try to think about things. Not everything we do is revolutionary, a lot is evolutionary as well. That's just the nature of building a real product. It can't all be mind blowing (but we try!). Even if we don't succeed 100% of the time at making things totally new and awesome, I think having that as a conscious goal is a good trait to have in a company. -harryh 1. I'll admit to being overly dramatic at times. Sorry about that.

harryh 15y ago
Really? Someone is down voting this? sadface
- yid 15y ago
  Sounds a bit like hubris perhaps...

potatolicious 15y ago

> "explore = copying yelp" Oh come on, that's just disingenuous. That's like saying Netflix's recommendation system is ripping off IMDb - they're completely dissimilar features. One seeks to use reviews to generate a one-size-fits-all rating. All users get the same "recommendations" based on this data. The other seeks to match you with other user behavior in order to create personalized recommendations. I can't speak to how well Explore works (haven't used it much), but just conceptually it's completely different.