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I was so puzzled why a company like Foursquare, which if they didn't invent the check-in, brought it to our lives, and associated their brand with it, completel

by gdilla 12y ago

I was so puzzled why a company like Foursquare, which if they didn't invent the check-in, brought it to our lives, and associated their brand with it, completely removed it from their flagship eponymous app and put in a new one called Swarm (which also has its own major annoyances). Shouldn't have this been the other way around? Foursquare is associated with checkins. Now you're trying to transform "Foursquare" into a smarter Yelp? I'm sure it can be a competitive service, but confusing your 100MM strong user base with these changes isn't going to help.

adora 12y ago
if their ultimate monetization strategy is the smarter yelp stuff, then building on the foursquare app makes more sense (trying to reacquire all those users would be costly)
gkoberger 12y ago
That's the point. Everyone thinks of them as a "useless check-in app"; they decided they had to do something drastic for people to take notice of their (awesome) location discovery platform. Foursquare has huge brand recognition, and it would take a long time to build that up for their new app (which will be the way 4Sq makes money going forward). EDIT: Put the word useless inside the quotes rather than outside — I like 4sq!
- jusben1369 12y ago
  It's interesting and I agree with you about their huge brand recognition. Unfortunately, they have a lot of negativity around the brand. Just look at the comments here around "horrible vanity app" etc. I wonder if they shouldn't have left Foursquare as the Check In app and had the "Swarm" equivalent be the new search and recommendation engine. They could have gotten most folks to move I suspect and not have to deal with all the negativity around the Foursquare app. Personally I love a pivot so I hope they're successful either way. I've started using it for discovery when traveling and think it has legs.
- gdilla 12y ago
  Check-ins have been valuable to them in so far as data and intelligence. It hasn't been valuable to them as something to monetize off of enough to satisfy investors. Hence the pivot in the hopes of more Yelp like ad revenue. But I wouldn't say check-ins are useless - they do help users in various ways when applied right.
  - gkoberger 12y ago
    Oh sorry, I should have included "useless" in quotes. I personally love Foursqare checkins -- I love seeing which of my friends have checked in at places I'm considering, I love having a history of where I've been, etc.
- untog 12y ago
  But the article itself states that the Foursquare name is associated with checkins. I don't argue with splitting it in two, but I'm confused about why they made checkins 'Swarm' and are trying to transition the checkin-associated name of Foursquare.
TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
> Now you're trying to transform "Foursquare" into a smarter Yelp? I'm sure it can be a competitive service, but confusing your 100MM strong user base with these changes isn't going to help. This is how I've been using Foursquare for the last two years and have found it to be a more enjoyable experience. The like it or don't like it review model just works better for me, not to mention the reviews on Foursquare are not nearly as painful as ones on Yelp. I think they could have done it without creating such a jarring experience, but I feel they waited too long and now are trying to force it too much.
smacktoward 12y ago
> I was so puzzled why a company like Foursquare, which if they didn't invent the check-in, brought it to our lives, and associated their brand with it, completely removed it from their flagship eponymous app It's because check-ins don't work. After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over. So if you're a company whose entire product identity was based on check-ins, you have two choices: 1) Come up with something, anything else that can be plausibly jammed into your app, and run with that; or 2) Go out of business. Unsurprisingly they went with #1, even if from the perspective of retaining some shred of dignity #2 would have been the better choice.
- gdilla 12y ago
  I didn't mean to imply it's a bad strategy to take on local personalized search, but the implementation to date is so confusing. If I open up Foursquare now to check in, it bounces me to Swarm. If I use Swarm to check in and want to see tips on a venue, it bounces me back to Foursquare. This is insanity.
- drstewart 12y ago
  I know a ton of people in the Bay Area that actively check-in. Please speak for your own experience.
  - smacktoward 12y ago
    You may not be aware of this, but the Bay Area is not exactly a representative sample of Mass Market Behavior. But that doesn't really matter, because we can resolve the dispute with a simple question: if check-ins were a mass-market thing, would Foursquare (and everyone else who tried them, like Facebook) be running away from them? The answer is no, obviously. If they worked, companies would be piling in, not checking out. But they don't, so they are.
    - baddox 12y ago
      > the Bay Area is not exactly a representative sample of Mass Market Behavior. No, it's not. But neither is > After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over.

by gdilla 12y ago

adora 12y ago

if their ultimate monetization strategy is the smarter yelp stuff, then building on the foursquare app makes more sense (trying to reacquire all those users would be costly)

gkoberger 12y ago

That's the point. Everyone thinks of them as a "useless check-in app"; they decided they had to do something drastic for people to take notice of their (awesome) location discovery platform. Foursquare has huge brand recognition, and it would take a long time to build that up for their new app (which will be the way 4Sq makes money going forward). EDIT: Put the word useless inside the quotes rather than outside — I like 4sq!

jusben1369 12y ago
It's interesting and I agree with you about their huge brand recognition. Unfortunately, they have a lot of negativity around the brand. Just look at the comments here around "horrible vanity app" etc. I wonder if they shouldn't have left Foursquare as the Check In app and had the "Swarm" equivalent be the new search and recommendation engine. They could have gotten most folks to move I suspect and not have to deal with all the negativity around the Foursquare app. Personally I love a pivot so I hope they're successful either way. I've started using it for discovery when traveling and think it has legs.
gdilla 12y ago
Check-ins have been valuable to them in so far as data and intelligence. It hasn't been valuable to them as something to monetize off of enough to satisfy investors. Hence the pivot in the hopes of more Yelp like ad revenue. But I wouldn't say check-ins are useless - they do help users in various ways when applied right.
- gkoberger 12y ago
  Oh sorry, I should have included "useless" in quotes. I personally love Foursqare checkins -- I love seeing which of my friends have checked in at places I'm considering, I love having a history of where I've been, etc.
untog 12y ago
But the article itself states that the Foursquare name is associated with checkins. I don't argue with splitting it in two, but I'm confused about why they made checkins 'Swarm' and are trying to transition the checkin-associated name of Foursquare.

TarpitCarnivore 12y ago

> Now you're trying to transform "Foursquare" into a smarter Yelp? I'm sure it can be a competitive service, but confusing your 100MM strong user base with these changes isn't going to help. This is how I've been using Foursquare for the last two years and have found it to be a more enjoyable experience. The like it or don't like it review model just works better for me, not to mention the reviews on Foursquare are not nearly as painful as ones on Yelp. I think they could have done it without creating such a jarring experience, but I feel they waited too long and now are trying to force it too much.

smacktoward 12y ago

> I was so puzzled why a company like Foursquare, which if they didn't invent the check-in, brought it to our lives, and associated their brand with it, completely removed it from their flagship eponymous app It's because check-ins don't work. After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over. So if you're a company whose entire product identity was based on check-ins, you have two choices: 1) Come up with something, anything else that can be plausibly jammed into your app, and run with that; or 2) Go out of business. Unsurprisingly they went with #1, even if from the perspective of retaining some shred of dignity #2 would have been the better choice.

gdilla 12y ago
I didn't mean to imply it's a bad strategy to take on local personalized search, but the implementation to date is so confusing. If I open up Foursquare now to check in, it bounces me to Swarm. If I use Swarm to check in and want to see tips on a venue, it bounces me back to Foursquare. This is insanity.
drstewart 12y ago
I know a ton of people in the Bay Area that actively check-in. Please speak for your own experience.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  You may not be aware of this, but the Bay Area is not exactly a representative sample of Mass Market Behavior. But that doesn't really matter, because we can resolve the dispute with a simple question: if check-ins were a mass-market thing, would Foursquare (and everyone else who tried them, like Facebook) be running away from them? The answer is no, obviously. If they worked, companies would be piling in, not checking out. But they don't, so they are.
  - baddox 12y ago
    > the Bay Area is not exactly a representative sample of Mass Market Behavior. No, it's not. But neither is > After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over.