
Graph of Foursquare's Popularity After Removing Check-Ins - dhsb
http://www.junkyardsam.com/blog/2015/4/15/foursquare
======
bandrami
I'm still astounded by this. _They had a # &$%ing verb_. That is the #&$%ing
gold standard of presence. "I'm going to foursquare this." I actually heard
real human beings say this.

If your app name has become a verb the _last thing you ever want to do is
refocus_. If you want to go to a ratings app like they apparently did
(because... uh... that's not a saturated space or anything?...) then you _make
another app_ and leave your wildly successful app alone.

~~~
roel_v
"If your app name has become a verb the last thing you ever want to do is
refocus."

What? If you don't make money, _you will go bankrupt_. You can be a verb all
you want, if it doesn't make money, _it doesn 't matter_.

~~~
bandrami
Ah, you fell for it too.

How much does it _actually_ cost to run the foursquare that millions of users
liked?

Hint: not very much.

If you can't make that "not very much" back from ads, you should sell to
someone who can.

~~~
juliangregorian
Ha. Hahaha. How many apps at that scale have you run? Foursquare is on AWS[0]
and serves 40 million users. Their monthly spend there is probably _at least_
in the 10-20k range. And this is before even considering that they had 135
employees at the time[1] and swank offices in a hip neighborhood in NY. Making
all that back with "ads", especially when your platform is almost completely
on mobile, is not a cakewalk.

0: [http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-
studies/foursquare/](http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/foursquare/)
1: [http://www.businessinsider.com/what-exactly-do-
foursquares-1...](http://www.businessinsider.com/what-exactly-do-
foursquares-135-employees-do-all-day-2012-8)

~~~
moe
_they had 135 employees at the time[1] and swank offices in a hip neighborhood
in NY. Making all that back with "ads", especially when your platform is
almost completely on mobile, is not a cakewalk._

How about firing 120 employees and moving to a smaller office, just until
you've figured out how to make money?

~~~
ulfw
Or why the need to grow to 135 employees with a checkin app for two mobile
platforms? What do they all do and how is that aligned with the product at
hand?

------
abalone
That is not a graph of the Foursquare app's popularity. It's a graph of Google
searches. It was in trouble before it split the apps.

Lots of searches are driven by news stories, including bad news stories. For
example the marker D is a story about how Foursquare resorted to raising debt
financing to avoid a down round. It's a mistake to label that "SUCCESS".

~~~
jjwiseman
Here's an actual graph of Foursquare's popularity, showing growth in 2009:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallofhair/4232092914/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallofhair/4232092914/)

~~~
kragen
BTW, the first time I followed your link, Flickr redirected me to an ad for a
Flickr app for an operating system I don’t use. You might want to find new
hosting for your images.

------
nailer
From the article:

> In attempt to placate frustrated users, Foursquare launched "Swarm," a
> separate check-in app with minimal features, removing most of what made the
> original Foursquare app great. "

This sentence is provably incorrect. FourSquare launched Swarm before their
pivot, there were no 'frustrated users' at that time because their main app
still did checkins. The article makes it sound like FourSquare were reacting
to pissed of customers. They weren't - they foresee people who liked checkins
and always accommodated them.

Not a frequent 4sq user but for me the app is more relevant now - it pops up
useful nearby stuff that I might like as I wander around London, so far its
suggestions are pretty good.

~~~
randomsearch
> FourSquare launched Swarm before their pivot

Not really, it was part of their pivot. I think that was pretty clear at the
time.

~~~
nailer
Yes, really. Events, in order:

1\. Swarm released

2\. New 4sq released

The article talks about 2 then 1, implying incorrectly that new 4sq was
released, people got pissed off, then swarm was released.

I don't think anybody is arguing that it wasn't part of the pivot. I
specifically am calling them out for implying 4sq was reacting to users who
were pissed off with their new app, when their new app wasn't yet released.

Reference: [http://mashable.com/2014/05/01/foursquare-
swarm/](http://mashable.com/2014/05/01/foursquare-swarm/)

~~~
zacharyz
I think you are confusing the initial statement. Foursquare perceived users as
"frustrated" before Swarm because of the conflation of reviews and check-ins
with in a single app. The pivot was to create a new app and separate the
concerns.

~~~
nailer
I think you're looking on their writing favourably.

------
will_brown
I have not seen a single comment regarding, what I think is the true/inherent
value of Foursquare. Everyone is pointing out that they failed to
monetize...but, just look at all the other billion dollar acquisitions on
start-ups/companies that have not monetized.

Anyhow...If I were to relate Foursquare and its value to any recent
acquisition it would be to Waze. Waze does have some degree of ads, but going
out on a limb, I would venture to guess they are pretty negligible. Others may
argue that Waze has all this valuable crowd sourced traffic data, well I don't
think that data has been or will be monetized either. So what is the value of
Waze that justifies a >$1B acquisition? In my estimation, it is the same thing
as Foursquare (if not now, at one point should have had), due to their user
base and the nature of the app, by default both Waze and Foursquare are
_cartographers_ and there is real money/value in that, and I am surprised of
>100 comments I didn't see one mentioning that.

Because of the cost involved, there are only a handful of true map makers in
the World, and from what I can tell they are all Billion dollar + companies.
Waze (and Foursquare) both found novel ways to propel themselves into the
space...and on the backs of their users, not with the traditional investment
of satellites/GPS technology. If anyone anywhere creates an App that has
millions of users who are updating geocentric data in real time from their own
users and not paying for this data...I wouldn't be to concerned with ads for
its own sake, just losing my user base.

------
thefreeman
The funny thing is, I bet a graph of their profits would be totally different.

Companies like Yelp and Foursquare are actually in the blackmail business.
They needed the users to achieve a massive amount of reviews. Now they just
collect "protection money" from business to remove / prevent bad reviews and
laugh all the way to the bank.

At least, that is the only way I can see their move making any kind of sense.

~~~
raverbashing
I see this myth being repeated, but it's clear it comes from people not
familiar with the platform

I've _never_ seen a place with an undeserved good/bad reputation. And I've
seen a lot of reviews from those sites (and went to those places)

As the number of reviews increase the "I'll never go back to this place"
begins to show, but they're compensated by good reviews.

Now, systematic bad reviews usually mean there is an issue with the place.

"Sponsoring your listing" helps if you have a small amount of reviews
(something like 5 to 10 reviews)

~~~
pappyo
You need to talk to small business owners in any service industry that isn't
restauranting. Those owners would consider the business practices of Yelp and
(I guess) Foursquare thuggish.

Two years ago I sat in on a call with a Yelp rep with a former employer of
mine (small business connected to the real estate industry). The Yelp rep said
"Advertising through Yelp will almost instantly increase you rating." My
employer asked "Does that mean you'll manually fix my score?" To which the rep
responded, "Your rating will get better if you advertise with us."

That was 2 years ago. I know Yelp has gotten flack since then, and maybe they
cleaned up. But that stink of being a thug doesn't wash off quickly,
especially in the small business community.

~~~
timr
See, this illustrates the fallacy of the "yelp extortion" argument: what the
rep said was totally clear -- when you advertise, your rating gets better. It
did _not_ imply that your rating gets better because they'll change it. That
was your leap to an unsupported conclusion.

Moreover, assuming that s/he _did_ say what you're quoting, you have to put it
in context: Yelp employs _hundreds_ (if not thousands now) of telephone sales
reps. They get paid crap, work in a call center, and have zero ability to
influence anyone, anywhere. Sales people, when incentivized to say things for
money, tend to walk as close to the ethical line as they can without going
over. I haven't looked, but there probably _is_ data showing that advertising
increases your rating. It wouldn't surprise me.

Every time I've bothered to dig into these claims, it's a story like yours,
where a business leapt to a conclusion because they thought they heard
something that validated a rumor they read on the interwebz.

~~~
wwosik
Yes, and

    
    
        "That's a nice kid you have. It would be really pity if something happened to him, right?"
    

is a valid worry expressed over someone's child isn't it.

~~~
timr
Make the comparison valid:

 _" Children who buy our product end up smarter and healthier than those who
don't."_

...and now it's just marketing. The rep didn't say that the rating would get
worse if you _don 't_ buy an ad, just that it gets better if you do.

~~~
__david__
It's more like a school that sells school pride t-shirts saying, "children who
purchase our t-shirts and wear them to school end up with better grades."

"What? No, not because the teachers favor them and inflate their grades, but
because they end up with more school pride and do better in class!" Wink wink,
nudge nudge.

~~~
timr
That's a conspiracy theory, not evidence. But if you're suggesting that's
what's behind the extortion claims, I wholeheartedly agree.

------
esolyt
This matches my real life observations. I personally stopped using both
Foursquare and Swarm and I know a lot of people who did.

However, this graph does not mention the popularity of Swarm. It's likely that
some Foursquare users switched to Swarm and uninstalled Foursquare entirely.

~~~
BilalBudhani
Exactly. Me and my friends also stopped using the app just after they remove
all the gamifications and mayorship thing. It was super cool amongst friend to
be a mayor of some place.

~~~
damon_c
Quietly becoming mayor of the building where your friend lives... good times
on Foursquare (3 years ago)!

------
pjc50
Why on earth did they think this was a good idea? Checkins were the point of
foursquare. Mildly annoying to other people on your social media, but that
also informed them of its existence.

~~~
onion2k
They built something that, while wildly popular for a while, was impossible to
monetize successfully. Checkins just don't represent any value to anyone (at
least, not that Foursquare could get anyone to pay for).

The lesson here is that you can build something _amazing_ and still fail if
you can't turn it in to a business.

~~~
bandrami
_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?

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

~~~
jedanbik
I think because you'd want a stream of user info for your machine learning
application.

------
orionlogic
Using Google Trends as an indicator of success or failure is pointless.
Companies morph, they disrupt themselves and change their core business
occasionally.

------
jim_greco
It's a good lesson on just how difficult building a startup is.

\- Crowley built this product before and sold it to Google.

\- Foursquare was an overnight phenomenon and had great user engagement.
People were addicted to this app!

\- They raised a ton of VC money and were able to hire some of the best
engineers in NY.

\- They're still struggling to build a sustainable business model.

~~~
codingdave
Your last bullet point is really the only one that matters.

I know my comments are repeating themselves, but if your business plan does
not includes actual transactions that generate actual revenue, then you are
not a business, you are a gamble.

The days of "Get traffic and it will all work out in the end" are over. Way
over.

~~~
jim_greco
How do you know what Foursquare's business plan was? Foursquare raised a
Series D. They didn't go into that pitch telling VCs that they're just getting
traffic and they'll worry about monetization later.

Struggling to build a sustainable business model is not the same thing as not
having a business model. Again, it's difficult.

------
antonioevans
They pivoted to become the location data powering major mobile apps (ex.
Twitter). Dealing with small business to monetize is hard. You can't charge
the consumer because you need the checkin and to get enough of a sales team on
the ground in the SMB market is astronomical. If you ask me if they should
bring back checkin to core 4sq app, not sure if it's fully relevant anymore.
Their new ad platform pretty much just monitors you as you walk. So geoloc
ads. I like it, and if they get enough SMB advertisers they can be a good
acquisition target.

~~~
joeshaw
Yes! I can't believe that nobody else has made this point.

I am as disappointed in the pivot of the app as everyone else, but it's hardly
the sign of impending death the post (and many of these comments) make it out
to be. 4sq built up an incredible points-of-interest database, and that is
their real product.

By providing that POI data to other providers -- most notably Twitter -- they
get much of the same data that checkins in their own app gave them. And
Twitter is massively more popular than the Foursquare/Swarm apps ever was or
ever will be.

------
jusuchin
One of the biggest things people seem to miss is the discounts offered by
business through Foursqaure if you checked in at the right time or X amount of
times. How FSq didn't exploit that or at least leverage that successfully is
beyond me. To me, that was one of the coolest features at the time. Check in
at so-and-so restaurant, get a free this or that or $2 off. In addition, it
made an easy way to see where other people were at downtown at the bars in
college.

------
mmccaff
Removing check-ins was a strange move, given that it was what made Foursquare
Foursquare. Personally, I didn't want to install Swarm in the same way that I
didn't want to install Facebook Messenger. I had the same feeling of not
trusting the reasoning behind splitting the functionality into two apps, and
in Foursquare's case - Foursquare no longer did what I had bought into, and I
was already in the habit of using Yelp for looking up reviews, so I stopped
using it.

They took over $162 million in funding, and I'd bet that a lot of people had a
lot of ideas on how to turn things around monetization-wise. They had to try
something, but this pivot seemed pretty detached from understanding their
users.

------
mwexler
Can't help but to note this other story popping up at the same time: Yahoo! in
talks to buy Foursquare... [http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/sources-yahoo-in-
talks-to-b...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/sources-yahoo-in-talks-to-buy-
foursquare/)

~~~
polynomial
If Yahoo plays their cards right, they could become a _hodgepodge_ of various
features that other competing platforms -notably facebook- do much better and
in a more integrated fashion.

Maybe they could also make a play in the Meerkat/Periscope space while they're
at it.

------
rock8y
I am one of the users who stopped using Foursquare when the new version was
released but for different reason.

When I was about to check in on my visit to a nearby mall, it said in my
feed,my friend was there too. I texted him if he wanted to catch up for a beer
after shopping. When we met up and ended up realizing that he never checked in
but still showed up on my list, I decided to stop using Foursquare atm. I
never knew if it was a bug or intended feature.

------
jgreen10
It looks more like a long and steady decline that has slowed somewhat since
releasing Swarm.

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=swarm%20app%2C%20fou...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=swarm%20app%2C%20foursquare%20app&cmpt=q&tz=)

Note that you should sum the two together to be fair, meaning they haven't
declined much since a year ago.

~~~
phreeza
It seems the dip is actually mainly driven by turkey. Turkey seems to screw
with many such Google Trends plots, I have noticed.

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Foursquare&geo=TR&cmp...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Foursquare&geo=TR&cmpt=q&tz=)

------
Adams472
Check-ins didn't bring any _new_ customers into a business, so foursquare
couldn't make any money on that feature.

I personally loved the check-in feature. With hundreds of millions in VC $,
foursquare had to find another way to make money. They're on the way to
building a really nice business with their reviews and ad-tech business.

I hope they didn't raise too much money before figuring it out.

------
DevX101
Another non-scientific anecdote here. I attended a talk with maybe 150
attendees recently and the VC asked the audience who had ever used Foursquare.
Then he asked who had used it in the past month.

Almost everyone had tried the product at some point, but very few were still
actively using the product.

------
m4tthumphrey
I am so happy about this, I've been waiting for some news on the subject for a
while. I LOVED checking in to foursquare, the main reason was so I could, one
day, use their API to visualise where I'd been the most/what time etc. I was
GUTTED when they removed check-ins.

~~~
RandallBrown
They didn't really remove checkins, they just moved them into a new app
(Swarm).

There's still a checkin button in Foursquare that launches Swarm. Saying
Foursquare got rid of checkins is like saying Facebook got rid of Messenger.
They didn't, they just moved it to a new app.

It's true, they did (mostly) remove the gamification aspect of checkins. It
was fun competing with my friends for getting the most points. Now, you just
can compete for stuff like most restaurants, most night life spots, etc.

------
randomsearch
Parody video makes a good point:

[https://youtu.be/DQAJmmVsi1g](https://youtu.be/DQAJmmVsi1g)

------
marban
Now that I've been reminded of the check-in era, I kinda miss the good old
Gowalla days and its then superior UI.

------
LaSombra
Today I use Swarm more like a location history than anything else.

------
grandalf
I would unfollow people on Twitter who constantly posted Foursquare checkins.
Not because I wasn't interested in their whereabouts, but because clicking
resulted in a boring, useless page.

Suppose wycats checks in at some interesting-sounding dive bar in the Mission.
I want to click and see pics of the place and the menu and a map showing
what's nearby.

(not implying wycats was a foursquare user just that he's a celebrity
developer / trendsetter...)

------
motoboi
Swarm recently included a messenger functionality. Never used it. Also, I'm
seeing swarm gaining traction on my region for some time now.

On the comments , there are a comparison between the two:

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=foursquare%2C%20swar...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=foursquare%2C%20swarm&cmpt=q&tz=)

------
patsplat
The new product (Swarm) should have the new functionality (Reviews). The old
product (Foursquare) should have been left alone.

------
mortehu
Historical rank of the Foursquare app in the App Store's "free apps" list,
which ranks by download count:
[https://i.imgur.com/djd7gmr.png](https://i.imgur.com/djd7gmr.png)

Its present day rank is better than at the beginning of 2014.

------
daretorant
What many are missing is that they transitioned from a consumer company to an
infrastructure company. Their location database (and API) was just announced
by Twitter as the backing for all location handling in tweets. That's a big
freaking deal, especially given they already do that for Facebook.

If you read the FS CEO's comments about the Twitter thing, you'll notice he
mentions they have basically focused on what their main value prop is: solving
the difficult problem of accurate and quality locations.

The consumer apps are just something they "still do" but I certainly don't
think they consider it their primary business model anymore.

------
jccalhoun
They qwikstered themselves.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix#Qwikster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix#Qwikster)

------
sspiff
> Foursquare's users felt betrayed that their reviews were

> used but what they once loved about the app was removed.

Well that's just a silly point of view. If you post something to a commercial
entity, in general that thing is no longer yours. You gave it to them. No
backsies.

Seriously, this is how it has worked for years. Don't feel "betrayed". You
chose to use their service, and post reviews on it. On the web, if you don't
pay for the hosting, it ain't yours.

~~~
code_duck
That may be the logical point of view, but it's difficult to get that across
to millions of people. Regardless of whether it is a justified feeling, some
users _felt_ betrayed, and their reaction was to stop using the app.

------
BigglesZX
If you downgrade to 7.0.8 or beyond on iOS (guide here:
[http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/how-to-downgrade-iphone-
apps/](http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/how-to-downgrade-iphone-apps/)), you can
still use the old combined app to check in AND explore local places. But since
the split most of my friends have stopped using it anyway...

------
munimkazia
This is pretty much what I have observed in my social circle, and my own
personal usage too.

Once they removed checkins and moved it to another app, most of the people
were outraged and decided they didn't want another app. The few who did give
the other app eventually stopped using it because none of their friends were
using it any more.

It is like Google deciding they to discontinue search and concentrate on ads.

------
agd
It's kind of hard to make sense of that graph without a vertical axis scale. I
can't even tell if it starts at 0.

Is there a version with scale?

~~~
aikah
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=foursquare](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=foursquare)

It's a "relative" scale. It's the difference between the highest point and the
lowest point. The highest point being when Obama checked in on Foursquare. The
lowest being ,well, when Foursquare started.

------
lectrick
Certainly one of the dumbest moves I've seen by an app in a long time. I was a
loyal checker-inner, though, and still use Swarm, although other people keep
asking me "people still use Foursquare?"

I like the recommendations it can give me once I tell it what I like, also its
"places I want to go to" type lists.

------
nc
I'm surprised foursquare didn't go into payments, they have the venue data,
merchant relationships, they could do what Reserve (from expa) is doing and
radically improve the experience of dealing with any local business.

Booking a haircut, paying for your meal all taken care of by foursquare.

------
fsk
My sister used to be a foursquare addict. She no longer uses it. They took out
all the stuff she liked.

~~~
briandear
My wife and I too.. We had a record of our of travels from about 2010 until
Swarm happened. All over the word, even desert outposts in Mongolia. We loved
it. I used to use it to find places in off the beaten path towns. It was fun
being the mayor of a little tea house in the middle of nowhere and it was fun
stealing NYC mayoralships when much of the hipsters headed to South-by. Now, I
just use Tripadvisor which isn't as fun. I'll still see faded Foursquare
stickers on businesses (next to their LevelUp stickers..) Maybe if 4sq hadn't
spent huge amounts of money on prime Soho office space and instead opened
regional sales offices to get small businesses to do self-serve ads and
promos, the perhaps that company would have had a chance.

------
shusain
Some feature ideas they should have tried: real time locations of
friends/family (ala Google Latitude), integration with something like Angie's
list, integration with something like gasbuddy.com, pull in data from Google
Now (be like Google Now but I see it on a map).

------
OhHeyItsE
I never understood how they could not make money. You have built a platform
where people notify you exactly when and where they are about to spend money.

Loyalty program? Upselling? Competitor advertising or intelligence?

------
MichaelTieso
Since the iPhone introduced widgets, I've found it a lot easier to check-in
using Swarm. I swipe down and click check-in. It already knows where I am.
Before this, I rarely used Swarm.

------
risratorn
This is the moment I wish Gowalla didn't sell to facebook :)

------
taigeair
Personally I use Foursquare most when I'm travelling or in new places. I
complement it with TripAdvisor. Foursquare could do what TripAdvisor does
better.

------
alcima
can't resist

[http://www.bhorowitz.com/the_new_foursquare](http://www.bhorowitz.com/the_new_foursquare)

------
shiven
As a scientist, the missing Y-axis makes one half of me laugh out in derision
and the other half cry out in despair.

Get your axes and scales right people. WTF.

~~~
woof
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Foursquare](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Foursquare)

"Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart.
If at most 10% of searches for the given region and time frame were for
"pizza," we'd consider this 100. This doesn't convey absolute search volume."

------
xwowsersx
Don't we have to check the trends for "swarm" now though or am I missing
something?

------
acd
I feel foursquares removal of checkings was the same as facebooks removal of
chat from the main Facebook mobile app. Now it's fragmented you need to use
two tools from what previously required one tool.

------
nodata
Are they making more money than before?

~~~
gchokov
They are not making any money, just like before.

~~~
nodata
Great! So they're they losing less money?

~~~
tim333
And trying to sell to yhoo for $900m

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/sources-yahoo-in-talks-
to-b...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/sources-yahoo-in-talks-to-buy-
foursquare/)

------
gchokov
@foursquare: We told you so.

------
binoyxj
Foursquare pretty much 'Digg'-ed their own grave. Oh snap!

