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was impossible to monetize successfully No excuse. If you have a timestamped record of people's interactions with physical businesses and can't find a way to m

was impossible to monetize successfully No excuse. If you have a timestamped record of people's interactions with physical businesses and can't find a way to monetize that, sell to one of the thousands of people who can connect those dots pretty easily. And how do you possibly convince yourself that moving into an already-saturated market like ratings is going to help?

mtbcoder 12y ago
Has anyone been able to successfully monetize check-ins? It seems that if it were that straight forward to monetize as you suggest, someone would have done this by now. Even Facebook's check-in system seems to have faded in popularity as far as I can tell.
- DonHopkins 12y ago
  Hotels.
- _asummers 12y ago
  Facebook checkins that I see on my wall are usually limited to "I want to brag about the good food I'm eating without Instagramming a picture of it, so I'll just check in at the restaurant". I don't think people trust Facebook enough to overtly give it access to more important location data, or I could just have too much faith in the average FB user.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    Your friends don't really sound like a representative sample. Most people complain about Facebook on privacy but don't modify their behavior in any way.
    - jdminhbg 12y ago
      There's a difference between modifying their current behavior and going out of their way to give FB more data without any real benefit. I don't think FB checkins have been super successful, have they?
      - emodendroket 12y ago
        I see plenty of them on my feed. I'm not sure that "success" has to be measured the same way in Facebook's case since they offer quite a few different things to do, and not just checkins.
onion2k 12y ago
If you have a timestamped record of people's interactions with physical businesses and can't find a way to monetize that, sell to one of the thousands of people who can connect those dots pretty easily. If it's as easy as you believe they wouldn't have pivoted. Perhaps they know something you don't. Or perhaps there's still a massive opportunity there. I don't know. And how do you possibly convince yourself that moving into an already-saturated market like ratings is going to help? I suspect it's by being wildly successful for a while and believing that you can translate that success in to a market that you can monetize. Plenty of companies make the mistake of thinking success follows you around rather than a pivot being a step backwards as far as your brand goes. Foursquare mistakenly thought that people were fans of Foursquare the brand rather than being fans of the value that Foursquare gave them (eg social validation from having the most checkins). They thought they were a brand like Nike that people do follow from one product to another. They were wrong.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  If it's as easy as you believe they wouldn't have pivoted. I don't think that follows. People and organisations make mistakes all the time; it's equally possible that Foursquare made a bad decision here.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    I would say it is not equally possible. This kind of major decision would have been made with the full agreement of the board. They have some very impressive investors, including DFJ, Union Square, and A16Z. The theory that all of these people, people who collectively happened to have $160m on the line, just happened to miss easy monetization opportunities is implausible.
- mason55 12y ago
  > I suspect it's by being wildly successful for a while and believing that you can translate that success in to a market that you can monetize Not only that but in Foursquare leadership's case it was a matter of being wildly successful two times. Dennis had already sold the first version of Foursquare to Google.
emodendroket 12y ago
If I wanted that data, why would I pay instead of looking at it for free?
- jedanbik 12y ago
  I think because you'd want a stream of user info for your machine learning application.
- DannoHung 12y ago
  No API, have to be logged in to view, then implement anti-scraping measures.
- bandrami 12y ago
  Because the data tree isn't available for free.

mtbcoder 12y ago

Has anyone been able to successfully monetize check-ins? It seems that if it were that straight forward to monetize as you suggest, someone would have done this by now. Even Facebook's check-in system seems to have faded in popularity as far as I can tell.

DonHopkins 12y ago
Hotels.
_asummers 12y ago
Facebook checkins that I see on my wall are usually limited to "I want to brag about the good food I'm eating without Instagramming a picture of it, so I'll just check in at the restaurant". I don't think people trust Facebook enough to overtly give it access to more important location data, or I could just have too much faith in the average FB user.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  Your friends don't really sound like a representative sample. Most people complain about Facebook on privacy but don't modify their behavior in any way.
  - jdminhbg 12y ago
    There's a difference between modifying their current behavior and going out of their way to give FB more data without any real benefit. I don't think FB checkins have been super successful, have they?
    - emodendroket 12y ago
      I see plenty of them on my feed. I'm not sure that "success" has to be measured the same way in Facebook's case since they offer quite a few different things to do, and not just checkins.

onion2k 12y ago

If you have a timestamped record of people's interactions with physical businesses and can't find a way to monetize that, sell to one of the thousands of people who can connect those dots pretty easily. If it's as easy as you believe they wouldn't have pivoted. Perhaps they know something you don't. Or perhaps there's still a massive opportunity there. I don't know. And how do you possibly convince yourself that moving into an already-saturated market like ratings is going to help? I suspect it's by being wildly successful for a while and believing that you can translate that success in to a market that you can monetize. Plenty of companies make the mistake of thinking success follows you around rather than a pivot being a step backwards as far as your brand goes. Foursquare mistakenly thought that people were fans of Foursquare the brand rather than being fans of the value that Foursquare gave them (eg social validation from having the most checkins). They thought they were a brand like Nike that people do follow from one product to another. They were wrong.

matthewmacleod 12y ago
If it's as easy as you believe they wouldn't have pivoted. I don't think that follows. People and organisations make mistakes all the time; it's equally possible that Foursquare made a bad decision here.
- wpietri 12y ago
  I would say it is not equally possible. This kind of major decision would have been made with the full agreement of the board. They have some very impressive investors, including DFJ, Union Square, and A16Z. The theory that all of these people, people who collectively happened to have $160m on the line, just happened to miss easy monetization opportunities is implausible.
mason55 12y ago
> I suspect it's by being wildly successful for a while and believing that you can translate that success in to a market that you can monetize Not only that but in Foursquare leadership's case it was a matter of being wildly successful two times. Dennis had already sold the first version of Foursquare to Google.

emodendroket 12y ago

If I wanted that data, why would I pay instead of looking at it for free?

jedanbik 12y ago
I think because you'd want a stream of user info for your machine learning application.
DannoHung 12y ago
No API, have to be logged in to view, then implement anti-scraping measures.
bandrami 12y ago
Because the data tree isn't available for free.