

Ask HN: Foursquare somehow surpasses Loopt - tempatempatempa

I have researching various mistakes and such that startups make, and in particular I have been looking at location-aware startups. I was recently looking at google trends for foursquare and loopt and noticed this: http://www.google.com/trends?q=foursquare+,+loopt&#38;ctab=0&#38;geo=all&#38;date=all&#38;sort=1 which implies that sometime around the beginning of this year foursquare must have made some sort of significant change, but I don't have a clue as to what. Do any of you guys know what I might be missing in understanding this? Thank you!
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sabj
I think that you have to remember also that Foursquare, in 2004 on that graph,
is not about Foursquare... it's about foursquare, I suppose, you know - the
game you play with chalk and a playground ball. So I think that that trends
graph is a little bit noisy.

To me, it's a question of 4sq taking off and Loopt failing to do so, more than
foursquare surpassing them when it was a clear neck-and-neck competition.

If we're looking at trends as a buzz-o-meter, it's the kind of situation where
Loopt is not able to leverage its initial boom of interest to transcend its
beginnings.

The seemingly 'obvious' answer is to ascribe the disparity to circumstances
beyond the startups themselves -- 2009/10 sees a significantly greater
penetration of location enabled phones, the effect of Facebook destroying our
notions of privacy has sunk in more (joking on that one), etc. I don't know if
that's the whole deal, but I think there have to be some macro effects
involved beyond just, well, people really like gaming elements and Crowley is
the one and only king of location.

Quick .02 : ) I think Foursquare has done a good job, but haven't followed
Loopt very well to know where they may have stumbled (or merely been unlucky).

~~~
cicloid
Loopt was a service too US centric. At least in Mexico, the current trendy
option is Foursquare. As for Gowalla (My favorite one), didnt do so well in
the beginning.

Maybe, what the trend is showing is more adoption from outside the US.

