With all this criticism against checking in, if Foursquare was still the app it used to be with Check-in built in, I'd still be using it.
The best part about Foursquare for me was a personal diary of things I did, the ability to share and gamify that diary, and only as a headfake, get location info. Swarm, not so much. They should have just made two apps -- one, the present day Foursquare, and another for Foursquare check-ins. They didn't have to create another brand. See how FB split itself into multiple apps.
Also, they killed the diary, the mayorships, the accomplishments. It's very hard to trust them with even an icon space on my phone anymore. Foursquare wanted a bigger toy, it threw what it had under the bus, and it wound up with neither.
In my opinion, the gamification was getting kind of old, especially as a lot of people had third-party apps that would check them into any location they even passed by. This probably made it very difficult to monetize location data, but it also made Foursquare less reliable for me when I want to know if my friends have actually been to a place.
I quite like the new Foursquare app, and never use other services like Yelp or Urban Spoon anymore. I see new places pop up on Foursquare before they're on Google Maps all of the time.
On the other hand, Swarm is a dull replacement of the gaming side of things. I find the design too "bubbly" almost childish. I do like that it is very easy for me to rate a place I've been, but I'm not very clear on how those ratings work with the ratings in the Foursquare app (which are much more in-depth).
Yeah, I noticed recently that I was automatically checked in to a bunch of places I haven't actually been, and I can't seem to find any setting to turn it off except for "disable background location data" which seems like it might be what triggers it. We will see if it actually stops, though.
>they killed the diary, the mayorships, the accomplishments.
It is there again, Swarm mayorships, coins, and accomplishements are fun. and I love when I check in to a new place and it shows a pop-up if one of my friends left a comment, since I know my friend tastes, I get more from it than a random Yelp review.
They brought all that stuff back. They've even added a new coins feature that lets you buy upgrades for your checkins. (Buy with coins you earn from checkins, not real money.)
I've found that the moves app + gyroscope actually fulfills this "diary of my day" pretty well.
I think (not sure) that moves uses fb checkin, but I never understood why Foursquare tried to pivot so hard when it was obvious that checkins were the main USP of the whole service.
Foursquare has to dangle a carrot for people to actually install and then use their apps. What's in it for them? Two+ years ago, I would see Foursquare check-ins on my social media feeds daily. Lately, not so much. As the novelty of checking into places continues to wind down, their data will get more and more stale.
Why should a user click "Allow" when the app asks to "access your location even when you are not using the app?"
Disclaimer: I don't work for Foursquare, but am fond of some people who do.
Checking in is definitely pretty dead - but the personal value of Foursquare for me is that they track where I go without any input from me. You can view your "location history" in the app, and for me it's ~90% accurate, and this data can be used to improve recommendations.
Anecdotally Foursquare's food/drink recommendations for me are far superior to Yelp and way less painful. I can trust the rating (Yelp's star ratings are a special kind of messed up hell) and the user-submitted tips is pretty great for quickly getting info on what to order and what to avoid.
I can search Foursquare with a keyword and go to the top 3 results and have a 95%+ odds of really enjoying myself. I can't say the same for Yelp.
> Checking in is definitely pretty dead - but the personal value of Foursquare for me is that they track where I go without any input from me. You can view your "location history" in the app, and for me it's ~90% accurate, and this data can be used to improve recommendations.
Foursquare's version of this is much more powerful, and IMO one of the actually valuable things they've created.
I live/work/play in Manhattan where the density of businesses is extremely high, but even here Foursquare is able to tell the difference between the bar on the ground floor vs. a restaurant in the basement of the same building. The level of specificity they've been able to achieve is pretty spectacular.
So it's not just a history of GPS coordinates or semi-educated guesses about which places you've been, it's a 90%+ accuracy list of actual establishments you've visited. That's pretty great.
Looking at the Google page 6 of the last 10 places it guesses I've been are off the mark - most are just places I've walked past in the last day or two, and Foursquare almost never erroneously picks those up.
What do you do with that data? If it's just used for tailoring recommendations, wouldn't it make more sense/be less invasive for the app to ask you for your top 5 restaurants, coffee shops, etc. You may go places you don't enjoy and never go back, but those would still end up factored into your recommendations with Foursquare.
The invasiveness is definitely a concern - but in my experience things that quiz you on preferences are rarely actually accurate. Honestly I'm not normally so liberal with sharing my location data, knowing actual people who work there probably tilted this in their favor.
I'm not an expert in recommendation systems or anything, but just anecdotally it seems like the amount of real observed data needed to make actually accurate recommendations is pretty high, beyond the abilities of a short intro quiz.
Though having experience building apps one concern is self-reporting vs. observation. Foursquare knows every place I go, not just the ones that deserve a pic on Facebook or a checkin. The problem with asking users for their top restaurants is that the responses you get will be more aspirational than real, and reflect who the user wants to be rather than their actual preferences.
> " but those would still end up factored into your recommendations with Foursquare"
On the history page you can mark places as "not liked", presumably this lessens or removes the impact of it. Definitely still some user interaction required - but it's IMO still a lot better than manually checking in, or using a completely unintelligent system.
We’ve heard that this latest round of
financing cut the company’s valuation
roughly in half. Foursquare declined
to speak to valuation, but its previous
round in 2013 put it at a reported
$650M valuation.
In other words, if you joined Foursquare in the last two years, your stock options are now worthless.
Not at all true. Employee option prices are not based on market (e.g. VC) valuation. They're based on 409A valuations which are usually much, much lower.
409(a) valuations of common stock are often 15 to 20% of the preferred. You can see why with Foursquare, where they may get bought out at a low value that doesn't return any capital to common at all.
If the preferred price had been $20, options might have been granted at $4. If this round is at $10, the $4 options are not "underwater".
It's my understanding that if a 409A valuation is not in line with market valuations (which pretty much means projections based on funding rounds for startups), the IRS will treat the difference more like an ISO. I've seen this first-hand, but I'm no tax law expert.
Most employees have a stock strike price that is say $2.00 when the company is valued at $20.00.
So if each Foursquare stock was worth $20 and is now worth $10, the strike price of $2 still allows employees to make $8 per share now.
If you are granted 100,000 shares and wait it out and build the company back up to $20 you will make $18 per share times 100,000 shares for a nice little $1.8M bonus for putting in the hard work.
Maybe because you stuck it out you not only increased the price to $50 per share, but you were also granted 100,00 more stock because you didn't care what TechCrunch said. $9.6M isn't bad for 4 years of hard work...
"So if each Foursquare stock was worth $20 and is now worth $10, the strike price of $2 still allows employees to make $8 per share now."
"Now" is wildly inaccurate; these are still illiquid assets, so even if this person were to exercise their options, they can't sell yet, most likely (I'd be shocked if they could turn much of a profit selling in the private markets).
And I have no idea what the terms of the new investment are, but I imagine they include some sort of protections for these new investors (I'd put money on them getting their money back plus full participation in a liquidity event). They probably get preferred shares. They probably get last-in/first-out privileges.
If you joined in the last two years, you're probably underwater based on strike price. Even if you're not, if the company has a liquidity event, once these latest investors get their money back, you're probably underwater by then (this new $45m coming off the top, minus any debt, you might split whatever's left -- MAYBE).
If you're an employee, you're probably not going to get anywhere close to $9.6m even if the stock rebounds. That's reserved for the new CEO who turns the company around, maybe some of his top brass.
Do employees have any opportunity to sell their ISOs on the secondary markets if they don't want to wait? No clue how any of that works so forgive me if that is a dumb question.
Tricky question that I'm not 100% sure on the answer of... My understanding is that it depends on the company, the stock agreement and of course finding a buyer. A company like foursquare is probably tough because there is such a risk of the stock being worthless. There are a lot of ways that I mentioned such that most common stock will become worthless, so all of that is factored in.
I would've spit my coffee up as an investor back when they told me they're ditching check-ins. That was such a terribly bad move, caused so many users to forget them, really Crowley should've moved all the way out.
It was one of those "we're going to be like steve" and do some jerk product design move, but it wasn't like steve in that it failed.
Rule #1 for the net: if you ever get so incredibly lucky as to define a verb (like google it, or tweet that), like they had with check-ins but we just didn't get to fully grok it and then they whacked it ... grow that like gold.
They should've built out check-ins as this powerful "where am i now" related kind of thing .. it could've been a real mobile local gem beyond anything today. Think the star trek moment where you scan where you are and it tells you all sorts of interesting things, useful utility links, cool data.
But instead they called it "swarm" and made it all about your bro's ... maybe that says something about Sf? oh wait they're in NY.
Almost everyone on this thread is referring to removing the check-in functionality as the death of Foursquare as a consumer product. Y'all - Foursquare did that because it was not just dying but basically dead. The change allowed them to be more flexible in the new phase of the company. It might not have worked the way they dreamed (I don't know) but Foursquare was crashing fast at the time of the split.
The main issue I see with this new enterprise business is that it depends on people using the Foursquare / Swarm app. And few people seem to be using it lately. In the past, I had tons of friends using it. But checking my friend list, no one is using for quite sometime.
-- edit
I had to download the app to check as I did not had it installed anymore.
I don't know the numbers, but I have anecdotal experience.
Most people seem to be not using 4sq. It varies a lot by location, and NYC seems like it would have the highest user penetration.
Out of the registered users, a subset of 4sq users (including myself) check-in very consistently (multiple times a day). For myself, it's useful in a quasi-lifelogging role.
> Out of the registered users, a subset of 4sq users (including myself) check-in very consistently (multiple times a day). For myself, it's useful in a quasi-lifelogging role.
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Google Timeline does this automatically now, without the need to checkin:
> To determine popular times, Google uses data from users who have chosen to store their location information on Google servers. Popular times are based on average popularity over the last several weeks. Not all businesses will have a popular times graph; the graph will only appear for businesses whose hours are listed on Google and about which Google has sufficient popularity data.
While Google timeline might be in the same ballpark for geologging, it is definitely not the same use case as having a newsfeed of check-ins by yourself & friends. Google timeline seems closer to 4sq's Pilgrim, both which are not anywhere near the same level of granularity as manual, explicit check-ins.
> While Google timeline might be in the same ballpark for geologging, it is definitely not the same use case as having a newsfeed of check-ins by yourself & friends. Google timeline seems closer to 4sq's Pilgrim, both which are not anywhere near the same level of granularity as manual, explicit check-ins.
I agree manual checkins are more granular, but it seems like the fad has worn itself out, and Foursquare is going to die a slow death with Google providing the data for free.
EDIT: As Steve Jobs wisely commented, "Its a feature, not a product."
I think the scary thing is that it doesn't depend on people using the app - merely having it installed. Pilgrim passively tracks your location whether or not you check in (or even open the app).
I wonder what if Foursquare did the opposite of what they did with Swarm. Keeping Check-in in Foursquare and creating a new app to find places (like yelp), people will leave the notion of check-ins behind in the Foursquare app and the new app will be a clean slate for a discovery app.
They're selling location trend data to anyone who will buy it. Retail operators (like Apple) may buy it, but the more typical customers for these types of services are hedge funds and other traders who want an edge. They'll correlate check-in volume with iPhone sales, for instance, to more accurately estimate Apple's quarterly revenues before they're announced.
> Google Search shows users the most popular times for some of their favorite businesses and institutions. When users search for places like a restaurant, bar, or gym on Google, they’ll see when their destination typically draws the largest crowds.
> To determine popular times, Google uses data from users who have chosen to store their location information on Google servers. Popular times are based on average popularity over the last several weeks. Not all businesses will have a popular times graph; the graph will only appear for businesses whose hours are listed on Google and about which Google has sufficient popularity data.
> Is this the same trend data Google is showing in location search engine results?
Very similar idea, but different source (4SQ app versus Android/Google apps). Also I'd imagine the 4SQ enterprise offering has a lot more ways to slice and dice the data so that it's useful for business.
Is the quality of the trend data they are selling going to go down with less users using FourSquare every day?
Or are they going to buy and sell location data from other people, possibly providing some data and analysis layer on top of it?
It was a little unclear on the article, but I'd be curious why a VC dropped $45M if they think the FourSquare checkin rate is trending to zero AND the new value is caught up in them doing something with location data, unless that location data is coming from somewhere else?
How is 4sq worth millions but yelp is worth billions? I find them both to be very similar services. Should there really be that much of a difference in valuation between the two? Seems like one is either over-valued or under-valued.
4sq has struggled mightily with traction/retention since the big change. Yelp is ubiquitous in the US and they are making strides into other countries.
Yelp had sales of $377m and profits of $36m which while not huge are at least profits. Foursquare is presumably losing money if it raised $45m in a down round.
All the great lasting products come with a strong sense of community, no matter the mechanic. Foursquare had that with its friend list and checkin scores.
Once they removed that from the core app, it became this faceless product that left me in the uncanny valley of trust. Where is this score coming from I would ask myself everytime I launched the app?
Maybe it was the failing of branding not to follow back up with OkCupid style of "hey did you know??" blog posts.
Swarm was a cute project, reminded me a little of Gowalla but without that digital diary/passport that Gowalla had. So it felt like it was missing the other half of my life story. It's not JUST the weekly checkin score, but my entire journey I want easy access to.
Just a casual Foursquare user here - I actually like(d) the app and found check-ins kind of fun; an interesting location is kind of like a hot selfie on Instragram for padding one's ego.
But from what I gather, check-in feature was removed? I must be using a rather outdated version of the app cause I had checked in to a few places recently.
This new focus on 'enterprise' ie- selling my data is a bit troubling.
Sooo... yeah, not intending to update the app - and will looking forward to an alternative or perhaps a more private geo app that isn't focused on 'enterprise'.
The best part about Foursquare for me was a personal diary of things I did, the ability to share and gamify that diary, and only as a headfake, get location info. Swarm, not so much. They should have just made two apps -- one, the present day Foursquare, and another for Foursquare check-ins. They didn't have to create another brand. See how FB split itself into multiple apps.
Also, they killed the diary, the mayorships, the accomplishments. It's very hard to trust them with even an icon space on my phone anymore. Foursquare wanted a bigger toy, it threw what it had under the bus, and it wound up with neither.