3 ms·

Not quite sure Foursquare is in a better position now that Facebook is bowing out. Is it possible this means there's no market to be had?

acavailhez 15y ago
I was wondering about the same thing. The article is extremely enthousiast about Foursquare, which I had stopped to use over Facebook. Foursquare adds a gaming layer to check-ins, which tends to get boring with time. Facebook however adds its social layer, with the ability to passively say "Hey I'm there", and actually be read by people who might care.
damoncali 15y ago
I've always thought the math on this was sketchy. Where are there enough users concentrated to make checkins commercially useful? I just can't see it, but I reserve the right to be totally, completely, wrong.
- jstrate 15y ago
  How about a conference? Music festival? I was at Outside Lands in GG park a few weekends ago and (given the price of a 3-day pass was $200) there were plenty of location aware smartphones used by ~60k people.
  - damoncali 15y ago
    Yeah, I suppose, but how do you get from that to the multi-hundred million dollar exits demanded by the investors on these deals? Compare those 60k on one day to the multiple millions every day that read local newspapers sites. How do you make something more and more and more local without reducing the number of people who care about it to near zero? For example, at a conference like SXSW, you have x-thousand attendees with their smart phones. You can track where they all go for the whole event. But the number of people who would find that data useful (by my way of thinking at least) is quite small - the local vendors, the other attendees (who won't pay a dime for the service), who else? How do you sell it to them and how much can you get? How do you monetize that in a way that isn't just glorified banner ads to a small market segment? How do you make it HUGE? That's where I have trouble.

acavailhez 15y ago

I was wondering about the same thing. The article is extremely enthousiast about Foursquare, which I had stopped to use over Facebook. Foursquare adds a gaming layer to check-ins, which tends to get boring with time. Facebook however adds its social layer, with the ability to passively say "Hey I'm there", and actually be read by people who might care.

damoncali 15y ago

I've always thought the math on this was sketchy. Where are there enough users concentrated to make checkins commercially useful? I just can't see it, but I reserve the right to be totally, completely, wrong.

jstrate 15y ago
How about a conference? Music festival? I was at Outside Lands in GG park a few weekends ago and (given the price of a 3-day pass was $200) there were plenty of location aware smartphones used by ~60k people.
- damoncali 15y ago
  Yeah, I suppose, but how do you get from that to the multi-hundred million dollar exits demanded by the investors on these deals? Compare those 60k on one day to the multiple millions every day that read local newspapers sites. How do you make something more and more and more local without reducing the number of people who care about it to near zero? For example, at a conference like SXSW, you have x-thousand attendees with their smart phones. You can track where they all go for the whole event. But the number of people who would find that data useful (by my way of thinking at least) is quite small - the local vendors, the other attendees (who won't pay a dime for the service), who else? How do you sell it to them and how much can you get? How do you monetize that in a way that isn't just glorified banner ads to a small market segment? How do you make it HUGE? That's where I have trouble.