
2011: The Year the Check-in Died - mjfern
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2011_the_year_the_check-in_died.php
======
harryh
So two points here:

1) Usage on foursquare is up 40% since the beginning of the year.

2) We've always seen the checkin as just the beginning of what we want to
accomplish. With the launch of explore and specials 2.0 we've started to get
more of our vision out into the world. You can expect more of this sort of
thing from us over the course of 2011.

-harryh, engineering lead @ foursquare.

ps: Want to be a part of it? We're hiring! <https://foursquare.com/jobs/>

~~~
chailatte
explore = chasing yelp

specials 2.0 = chasing groupon

Foursquare's vision appears to be looking backward. Dennis Crowley's been
thinking about this space for 10 years?

~~~
scorpion032
Those are the natural extensions to the product. What would you rather do?
ultra-checkin, super-checkin and more badges. "Cool quotient" is good enough
to begin you with; but you need to get some real value out of it as well.

~~~
IgorPartola
What real value can a checkin service potentially provide? (Serious question)
I think there are a few things: deals from local businesses, meeting new
people, interaction coordination.

Deals are booming now. Groupon and LS are huge and do manage to provide me
with value. I think Groupon's upcoming mobile offering is brilliant. The likes
of foursquare can use this model successfully as well.

Meeting new people is always a tough one, but it is what people want. Give
someine a way to make new friends through your service in real life in a safe
way and you'll strike gold.

Interaction coordination is probably the most interesting thing I can think
of. Imagine communities organizing events by using foursquare. You get
invites. You check in. You pay for the event from your phone. You monitor long
distance races by the participants' checkins. You participate in live events
virtually by having your name flash on a giant screen. At a town fair you are
randomly assigned a person and if you find them within a time limit and check
in together you get a prize. A giant game of assasin based on checkins.

The checkin itself is just a tool. Playing with a hammer is fun at first but
unless you have something to nail it will get boring.

~~~
scorpion032
Thats exactly what I meant to say.

Too bad the sarcasm in the first sentence is lost on you.

~~~
IgorPartola
No need to be brash. I understood your sarcasm. Just continued the thought
further.

~~~
scorpion032
My bad then. Since you were trying to make the same point as I was, I was
under the impression you got it wrong.

To be fair, most replies in HN are arguments than "thought continuation"

------
aaronmarks
Foursquare is something that became wildly popular at the same time smart
phones were becoming more and more ubiquitous. It is a cool sort of "Hey check
out what my new phone can do" kind of tool.

As smart phones are becoming more the standard and less the shiny-new-thing,
though, Foursquare and the like are turning out to not actually provide that
much value, and are losing their stickiness.

------
unohoo
Personally, I think that 4sq should have taken up the acquisition offer that
it supposedly had.

No matter how much they try and innovate and launch new features, the premise
of 'checking in' is forcing a user behavior - and sooner or later, checkin
fatigue is going to set in. Just like most other shiny things, the shimmer
wears off real quick.

~~~
brk
I agree. Not to mention that for many places the whole check-in bit a moderate
hassle.

EG: Panera Bread.

Go in to get a coffe and a bagel in the morning. Take out phone, launch app.
Oops, can't connect. Panera has free wifi, but I have to open the browser on
my phone and check a little box and hit submit. Go back to the app, let it
figure out where I am. No, I'm not at Baby Gap (next store over) at 7AM, I'm
at Panera. Finally check in. And then... nothing... kind of anti-climatic
really.

Meanwhile, I'm juggling credit cards and rewards cards and a drink and a bagel
with the cashier.

If I'm lucky, I might get to be Mayor and get $1 off or something, which
equates to earning about 2 cents for every checkin.

I played with 4sq and some of the other location services for a while, but
just never got any value out of it proportionate to what I put into it time-
wise.

------
willifred
While the article raises some valid points, I question the use of compete.com
figures to make any claims about foursquare's declining traffic.

~~~
troymc
Compete.com measures _something_ , and whatever that something is, it's
declining.

~~~
barrkel
Latest stackoverflow blog post also shows that site declining on compete.com,
despite all other analytics showing it growing.

[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-exchange-
traffic...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-exchange-traffic-
still-growing/)

------
bhousel
Location based checkin sites are basically games. The problem is that, like
all games, people eventually get tired of them and move on to something else.

~~~
Aramgutang
Tell that to Zynga and Blizzard. Social games (which Foursquare would fall
under) have a very long-lasting grip on people.

------
bricestacey
Foursquare reminds me of this fake RPG called Progress Quest[1]. It's like
SETI@Home, but for RPGs. In other words you do nothing while it automatically
advances progress bars on the screen and your character advances and there is
nothing else to it. Ironically, a lot of people actually wind up running it
for quite some time, myself included, but then the joke ends and they stop. To
me, it seems inevitable the same will come of Foursquare.

[1] <http://progressquest.com/>

------
po
Declaring a whole class of new and growing startups as "dead" is the most
hipster thing I can imagine: Checking in? I guess. _I_ haven't checked into a
venue since 2010.

There is some interesting thoughts in here but they're so mixed in with flawed
analysis that I don't think I actually learned anything from reading it.

~~~
URSpider94
True, except for the fact that Foursquare rode to prominence on the backs of
hipsters, roaming Brooklyn and SXSW in droves with their smartphones. So, one
might argue that if hipsters have moved on, then that's a leading indicator.

------
daimyoyo
When I first started using foursquare it was neat but I didn't get the appeal.
Then I grabbed my first mayorship and for a few months, I checked in
religiously. Recently, checking in to places has become a chore. I still do
check in when I remember to, but it's not a priority any more.

~~~
andybak
No-one has ever explained to me why I would want to be the 'mayor' of
anything.

I don't even see in what sense it's a game. What. I have to go to Starbucks
more than some other person to win?

I thought I was missing some important aspect like I did before I 'got'
Twitter but in this case apparently not.

------
baconface
Checking-in is tedious. Most of the benefits of location-based services are
happening through better uses of wireless communication. Excluding GPS,
Shopkick uses high frequency audio signatures and ZuluTime just patented some
new wifi based stuff ([http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/11/zulutime-issued-
patent-for-...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/11/zulutime-issued-patent-for-
location-aware-wireless-networks/)).

------
bergie
I was quite enthusiastic about check-ins when the good old Plazes service was
launched back in 2004. One of the great things about that service was that
originally check-ins were based on the WiFi access point you were connected
to. This made them effectively automatic.

Unfortunately they had a very problematic rewrite from PHP to Rails that lost
them quite a bit of their user base, and later Nokia bought the company.

Here are some notes from the one and only PlazeCamp they held just before the
acquisition:

<http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/plazecamp/>
<http://fourstarters.com/2008/01/17/plazecamp-wrapup/>

The key points with Plazes were: automatic check-ins (it only asked you for
information when nobody had connected to that network before), nice statistics
(how much you travel per day, who spends time in the same place as you), and
also some fun stuff like racing to see who registers most new plazes.

------
joe42
The author gives four reasons for why people check in. He didn't mention the
reason I would like to use a checking-in service (I'm not sure if there is a
popular one like this yet). I'd like to check in at a bar or a club (I often
go alone) and have the service match me with another checked-in person (or
people) to hang out with. Instead of using the service to hang out with people
I already know, I'd like a service to help me meet new people.

Seems like a check-in service could be a nice way to lower the barrier of
introducing oneself to a stranger. It's so easy to talk to strangers online,
it would be nice to bring that to the meat world.

~~~
URSpider94
I think the author's point is that this sort of usage is only actually
feasible with a very narrow demographic, in one or two places in the country
-- maybe New York, Boston and San Francisco. Elsewhere, the chance that there
would be even two people in a given bar or club running that app and looking
for new friends at the same time is basically zero point zero.

Besides that, in the introductions world, "meeting new friends" is marketing-
speak for meeting people to date, or more precisely, to hook up with. And, I
can imagine, as the author does, that women would be pretty squeamish about
getting involved with a service that announces their presence in a particular
bar and invites people to meet them.

In any case, Loopt has this service, or at any rate did at one point -- in one
of their iterations, they cordoned it off into its own application (Loopt
Mix). I turned it on briefly once, to see what it would do, and to be honest,
it was pretty creepy, a lot like the parts of Craigslist that have been shut
down ...

~~~
joe42
Yes, those would be the two big challenges:

* It needs to be widespread to work well.

* No creepy factor.

------
wazoox
OK, so please bear with me for a second. What the heck are these check-ins
about? foursquare? Huh, I can't make any sense of their horrid front page,
what is this about? Where is the explanation (no, not a video, thank you I
_can read_ )? Allow me to play the grumpy ol' man here, but this look like
another useless toy for teens. And yes, I include facebook and twitter in this
category, too.

~~~
mryall
You're judging a book by its cover. Why not try them out before you criticise?

Also, today's teens are tomorrow's free-spending twenty-somethings, so their
preferences can be quite relevant for many businesses.

~~~
wazoox
> _You're judging a book by its cover._

I'm judging a website by its front page, godammit. What else could I do? I
clicked a bit around, but my PC slowed to a crawl, so much for a first good
impression.

> _Why not try them out before you criticise?_

I could try it out if I could make any sense of it. I don't have time to open
accounts on random websites just in case it may be interesting. I'm tech-savvy
enough, but if I can't understand what a website is about at first glance,
either 1° it's definitely targeting an audience I'm no part of; or 2° there's
a serious presentation problem.

So I'm not criticizing, I'm leaning towards the gentler side : I'm probably
not their target. Or else, in case they're actually targeting 40yo geeks and
entrepreneurs, they may be doing it wrong.

------
mkramlich
I also thought Foursquare was a fad. Who cares if you checked in there? Who
cares if you're the mayor?

I actually have one LBS idea that for me would be really useful, I'd love to
have it, and thinking about building it. However I'm slammed with other stuff
right now and I'm loathe to switch to Yet Another Shiny Thing rather than
build up an existing project further.

(Credentials: I wrote the original Postabon/Signpost iPhone app (a deals LBS
startup now backed by Google Ventures), and the iPhone app for a different and
more recent AR/ecommerce LBS startup that's currently in stealth.)

------
dr_
I agree with the article's predictions with respect to foursquare, but I'm not
sure about Facebook, there's still tremendous potential there. Facebook
appears to have released Places without putting much thought into it beyond
allowing people to simply check in wherever they are and share it with their
friends. But I wouldn't be surprised if they were working on incorporating
deals with local businesses, etc on a much larger scale, some time soon,
either on their own or in conjunction with Groupon or Living Social.

~~~
klochner
facebook was actually pretty quick to launch deals:

<http://www.facebook.com/deals>

------
justinxreese
\- Look at compete.com traffic estimates

\- Extrapolate

\- Make assumptions based on extrapolation

\- Write sensationalist headline

------
Tichy
Missed one reason to check in: to promote the location (being a fan). That
alone probably isn't enough to sustain a checkin service, though.

------
neutronicus
The article made me wonder: are any of these accurate enough to be used for
"where did I park"? I would love it if my smart phone had a way to eliminate
"standing around in a parking lot looking bemused" from my day. I would love
it so much that I would permit it to have a "social" component.

~~~
StavrosK
Why can't you just add a star in Google maps or something? it should be
accurate to two meters... I bet there are tens of apps that do it.

~~~
mgkimsal
there are apps for it, but i've found launching any app as I leave the car and
head in to a shop to be too much trouble. By the time I get the app loaded and
ready to record, I'm many meters from the car's location.

It'd be better if the device had a feature to just replay your GPS locations
for the last 60 minutes.

------
cheez
And I thought this was about some new source control system that didn't need
checkins.

------
InclinedPlane
Yes, yes, sure, in the greater sense of things everything is dead or dying.
However, I think it's a bit silly to write off a phenomenon, market, or
product while it's still in the explosive growth stage. I personally don't
like foursquare but it seems to be going even strong as ever, which is all the
more impressive after having weathered some rather strong competition (such as
facebook).

------
jsavimbi
The check-in is way too egalitarian in order to transfer any perceived social
wealth through using the service.

What value can it have when I spend $300 on tickets to an event and some
schmuck in the nosebleed seats who spent $30 can check-in with the same social
weight? He's not in my class and I don't want him to be associated with me,
never mind competing with me in a game.

It's all fun and games until the normals start playing.

------
rwmj
Lacking context. What's a "check-in"?

------
jmtame
correction: foursquare is up to 7 million users, I spoke to dennis a week or
two ago. pretty impressive by comparison, I think Facebook had 6 million at
their year 2 mark.

~~~
teej
Woah there, wait just one minute. Facebook had 5.5 million active users after
two years _[1]_. Foursquare has 7 million registered accounts _[2]_. I
shouldn't have to explain how different those two metrics are.

[1] <http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline> (active user defined as
having visited in the last 30 days)

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/foursquare-closing-in-
on-7-...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/foursquare-closing-in-on-7-million-
users/)

~~~
jmtame
ah missed the "active" part ;) I quoted that from memory on my phone--not an
apples to apples comparison but makes me wonder. I'm interested in what
portion of 4sq's users are 'active', so I'll see if I can do some digging and
find out.

