As long as you have Twitter and Facebook hooked up to your Foursquare account... None of my close friends use Foursquare, a couple of them have Twitters, and all of them have Facebook. Communicating location solely through Foursquare would fall under "Maybe not good" for me.
Same for me -- no close friends use it. Not much of a point: Increasingly, I see people using Facebook places, which has similar functionality, as well as geotagged tweets.
I seldom used my Foursquare account until I started getting into Instagram, which has a really good interface for easily sharing geotagged photos on Foursquare, Tumblr, email, Twitter, and Facebook.
Haha, this is the same exact thought when I was introduced to Facebook in 2007. "Okay so...I can uhm..look at pictures of my friends and write messages to them through tiny boxes? Okay, why would I not just use Email?" I was sure the website would be a failure. They even required you to register before showing you any content! How could that ever work? Actually I still have no idea on that one.
What's the point of producing (checking in)? I'm not sure. Good karma for the benefits of consuming?
But consuming, yes there is a gain. You can use the "explore" feature to see what's a good place for [X] in your radius.
Doesn't just limit to your neighborhood though. I used it when traveling in Bangkok to verify local suggestions to which bars/clubs are good. Or when you're in Vegas, you can see which hotel's club is going off. If a place has 4 check-ins vs 5 vs 12 vs 20, then you can extrapolate that the "20" place is poppin'.
For the average user the benefits really are slim. I'd consider myself an early adopter and giver of a benefit of a doubt to most of these sites, and i've certainly suffered check-in fatigue. I go into 4sq maybe once a month now. MAYBE. The deals in it aren't that exciting, badges don't interest me, maybe i've gotten burnt out on it.
Well, according to TechCrunch, they are averaging 3M check-in's per day. Even if the average check-in per user is 1, that's 3M DAUs (which is highly unlikely). My guess is between 1M-2M DAUs with average of 1-3 check-in's per user per day.
Yep. The title of the article on 4sq reads "members", which is more accurate. Not sure if the 4sq folks changed their titles or if the HN poster mangled.
It's true that engagement means more than installs here. That is why Foursquare is going after casual users. Dennis Crowley knows folks who don't check in often are key to really growing at scale.
With some quick analysis on some aggregate of 4sq feeds, you could determine the average # of checkins per user per day, which would let you estimate daily actives reasonably well (3m checkins / day)
Not that I care nor that it matters, but I am going to go out on a limb here and assert that there is no way that the following is true (even plus or minus a few %):
"The Foursquare user demographic breakdown is currently about 50/50 male versus female and 50/50 for international versus U.S.
Two points:
- Foursquare media and coverage is overhwelmingly American (thus lending to American users)
- Foursquare appeals to a young demographic. Young demographics in gadgets and apps are dominated by young boys
I say this via my experience owning two gender neutral apps, one a mobile social network and the other a tool with over 50,000 and 100,000 users. In the absense of a pink icon and a "my little pony" picture, mobile apps overwhelmingly attract more males than females. My app, without even trying, has males on a ratio of 2-1. They are just more experimental. I recall reading a long time ago, when twitter had in the tens of millions of users, that its user base was also overwhelmingly male.
Has anyone seen comparable numbers for Facebook Places? I used to be a Foursquare junkie, but when FB Places came out I pretty much stopped using the app...
I would have expected it to be much higher. But, I guess I shouldn't surprised it isn't...since I don't know anyone that uses it with any regularity. But, I don't live in the valley, anymore, so I'm out of the echo chamber.
I tried it, checked in at maybe four places, and then stopped. It's just too much trouble for no value I can discern. I mean, I see the value to the vendors, I see the value to Foursquare, I just don't see what I get out of it. (But, I also don't have a facebook status and I don't constantly tweet what I ate for breakfast, so I'm not the target audience, I guess. I'm not the self-reporter type.)
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 41.0 ms ] threadI seldom used my Foursquare account until I started getting into Instagram, which has a really good interface for easily sharing geotagged photos on Foursquare, Tumblr, email, Twitter, and Facebook.
edit(typo)
But consuming, yes there is a gain. You can use the "explore" feature to see what's a good place for [X] in your radius.
Doesn't just limit to your neighborhood though. I used it when traveling in Bangkok to verify local suggestions to which bars/clubs are good. Or when you're in Vegas, you can see which hotel's club is going off. If a place has 4 check-ins vs 5 vs 12 vs 20, then you can extrapolate that the "20" place is poppin'.
1. How many are duplicates.
2. How many are active.
3. How many are truly active, i.e. are not kept just because one is too lazy to deactivate it.
PS- CityVille has 18.3 million daily average users.
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/06/20/foursquares-new-growth-st...
"The Foursquare user demographic breakdown is currently about 50/50 male versus female and 50/50 for international versus U.S.
Two points: - Foursquare media and coverage is overhwelmingly American (thus lending to American users) - Foursquare appeals to a young demographic. Young demographics in gadgets and apps are dominated by young boys
I say this via my experience owning two gender neutral apps, one a mobile social network and the other a tool with over 50,000 and 100,000 users. In the absense of a pink icon and a "my little pony" picture, mobile apps overwhelmingly attract more males than females. My app, without even trying, has males on a ratio of 2-1. They are just more experimental. I recall reading a long time ago, when twitter had in the tens of millions of users, that its user base was also overwhelmingly male.
Anyway just thought I would share.
Seriously, I really would like to know how many active users are on 4sq. Is there any data about it?
I tried it, checked in at maybe four places, and then stopped. It's just too much trouble for no value I can discern. I mean, I see the value to the vendors, I see the value to Foursquare, I just don't see what I get out of it. (But, I also don't have a facebook status and I don't constantly tweet what I ate for breakfast, so I'm not the target audience, I guess. I'm not the self-reporter type.)