This really isn't what Foursquare is anymore. It's become a rather good location database & discovery platform.
I never used it when it was "hot" (~2012), but in the past few months I've really come to like it for finding places (restaurants, etc.) & making lists. Also, their tools for making edits to the DB are quite impressive, and they do a great job of leveraging superusers to moderate those changes.
Meta observation: 4sq was a grind game, and aside from the addicted, grind games are the most fun ever, until they're not cool at all anymore and everyone always knew it.
So you create an awesome successful grind game. Cool. Next step, either create a new grind game (and hope lightning strikes twice LOL), or find a new line of business to pivot into, or go out of business.
What I don't understand, is that they say they use the super-data from these 50 Million people to give personal recommendations in the new Foursquare app.
Now I presume they want to broaden the appeal of Foursquare beyond those people that like check-ins, but does that now mean that the check-ins from Swarm continue to power the recommendations in Foursquare? Is it relevant to use the data from early-adopter-types for an app that is meant to have mass appeal?
They'll almost certainly use the Swarm data to generate recommendations, but there are other non-check-in features to consider (likes, reviews, review sentiment come to mind).
Foursquare has been promising this since the beginning, it's why I keep using it and checking in. Hoping this lives up to the promise, since their current recommendations are pretty static.
I was so puzzled why a company like Foursquare, which if they didn't invent the check-in, brought it to our lives, and associated their brand with it, completely removed it from their flagship eponymous app and put in a new one called Swarm (which also has its own major annoyances). Shouldn't have this been the other way around? Foursquare is associated with checkins. Now you're trying to transform "Foursquare" into a smarter Yelp? I'm sure it can be a competitive service, but confusing your 100MM strong user base with these changes isn't going to help.
if their ultimate monetization strategy is the smarter yelp stuff, then building on the foursquare app makes more sense (trying to reacquire all those users would be costly)
That's the point. Everyone thinks of them as a "useless check-in app"; they decided they had to do something drastic for people to take notice of their (awesome) location discovery platform.
Foursquare has huge brand recognition, and it would take a long time to build that up for their new app (which will be the way 4Sq makes money going forward).
EDIT: Put the word useless inside the quotes rather than outside — I like 4sq!
Check-ins have been valuable to them in so far as data and intelligence. It hasn't been valuable to them as something to monetize off of enough to satisfy investors. Hence the pivot in the hopes of more Yelp like ad revenue. But I wouldn't say check-ins are useless - they do help users in various ways when applied right.
Oh sorry, I should have included "useless" in quotes. I personally love Foursqare checkins -- I love seeing which of my friends have checked in at places I'm considering, I love having a history of where I've been, etc.
But the article itself states that the Foursquare name is associated with checkins. I don't argue with splitting it in two, but I'm confused about why they made checkins 'Swarm' and are trying to transition the checkin-associated name of Foursquare.
It's interesting and I agree with you about their huge brand recognition. Unfortunately, they have a lot of negativity around the brand. Just look at the comments here around "horrible vanity app" etc. I wonder if they shouldn't have left Foursquare as the Check In app and had the "Swarm" equivalent be the new search and recommendation engine. They could have gotten most folks to move I suspect and not have to deal with all the negativity around the Foursquare app. Personally I love a pivot so I hope they're successful either way. I've started using it for discovery when traveling and think it has legs.
> Now you're trying to transform "Foursquare" into a smarter Yelp? I'm sure it can be a competitive service, but confusing your 100MM strong user base with these changes isn't going to help.
This is how I've been using Foursquare for the last two years and have found it to be a more enjoyable experience. The like it or don't like it review model just works better for me, not to mention the reviews on Foursquare are not nearly as painful as ones on Yelp. I think they could have done it without creating such a jarring experience, but I feel they waited too long and now are trying to force it too much.
> I was so puzzled why a company like Foursquare, which if they didn't invent the check-in, brought it to our lives, and associated their brand with it, completely removed it from their flagship eponymous app
It's because check-ins don't work. After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over.
So if you're a company whose entire product identity was based on check-ins, you have two choices:
1) Come up with something, anything else that can be plausibly jammed into your app, and run with that; or
2) Go out of business.
Unsurprisingly they went with #1, even if from the perspective of retaining some shred of dignity #2 would have been the better choice.
I didn't mean to imply it's a bad strategy to take on local personalized search, but the implementation to date is so confusing. If I open up Foursquare now to check in, it bounces me to Swarm. If I use Swarm to check in and want to see tips on a venue, it bounces me back to Foursquare. This is insanity.
You may not be aware of this, but the Bay Area is not exactly a representative sample of Mass Market Behavior.
But that doesn't really matter, because we can resolve the dispute with a simple question: if check-ins were a mass-market thing, would Foursquare (and everyone else who tried them, like Facebook) be running away from them?
The answer is no, obviously. If they worked, companies would be piling in, not checking out. But they don't, so they are.
> the Bay Area is not exactly a representative sample of Mass Market Behavior.
No, it's not. But neither is
> After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over.
> > After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over.
There is such a thing as exaggeration to make a point. I'm pretty sure the author is aware that there are more than literally zero people checking in with Foursquare. As is everyone.
On a similar note, I could list the reasons why checking in is, in fact, nothing like "those stupid plastic awareness bracelets". But that would be a waste of everyone's time.
How many times does someone get to explicitly state absolutes before reasonable readers stop inferring that they are exaggerating? If the statement was "nobody wants to check in anymore," that's pretty clearly an exaggeration. But that statement said "nobody" twice, and "completely," and "100%." If someone had wanted to literally claim that zero people check in, how would they do that?
"An insignificant number of people, too small to provide a VC-backed startup with even a minimally acceptable exit, want to check in anymore."
Feel free to mentally substitute this version for my earlier, more-fun-to-read-while-still-making-the-same-point version whenever you browse this thread.
Thanks for linking me to the Wikipedia article on hyperbole. I have 100% never heard of that concept. Also I wanted to thank you for something, because you already said "you're welcome" and I don't want to leave you hanging.
I'd actually like to see your argument - I can see the possible benefit to business owners if their customers use Foursquare, but I've never been able to figure out why anyone would want to use Foursquare in the first place. What benefit does the user get out of checking in everywhere he goes?
The personalized search is a good thing. I have to agree and that is something I like, if I am in a different city.
But the problem, 4sq currently piss off those people who like to check-in. Most of the people I know, don't like Swarm and either have not made the move or stopped using Swarm. I myself, also almost stopped using Swarm. Because they reduced and modified the gaming aspect so that is no fun anymore.
The problem here is, if those people with the check-ins are going missing from the platform, because of those issues. Then the people fulling the database and as such the recommendation engine are going lost. That is long term problem.
The thing is, there was no need to separate it. They could have implemented the personal search the same way as they do it now. They even could have changed to hide or show the Check-in depending on how I have signed in.
I think gdilla's point isn't that the splitting of checkins is a bad idea, it's that they should have spun out a new app with this new stuff, and kept the check-in game in the original app.
There's a lot of merit to this IMO. Foursquare the brand is completely and 100% associated with checking in to places. It seems silly to break the checkin feature into a completely new app, under a completely new brand, while trying to convince everyone that Foursquare is no longer Foursquare but is stilled called Foursquare.
IMO the better move was to keep Foursquare around but launch a separately-branded app for the discoverability.
Theoretically, you are right. But SMBs have heard of Foursquare and this is invaluable for them as this is how they are going to make money in the end.
As for consumers - you are right for the single digit millions who check in from time to time, but for others? Foursquare is an app that was not for them, but they know it was about local and they did not mind it.
The hard part is going to convince them that this new app is more interesting and better than Yelp, Sosh or others.
Anecdotally I've actually had to explain to multiple people that they should use Foursquare (I find the discoverability features actually excellent) - and been met by the "but that's the check-in app" response.
The number of active people checking in is certainly low, but general mass-market awareness of their (former?) line of business is quite high.
So on top of convincing people your discoverability features are great, you have to first convince them that your app isn't what they already think it is. Personally I think this is very poor branding.
Millions compared to what? Their historical peak check-in rate? Number of active users? Number of total users?
Everything I've seen anecdotally points to Foursquare having a small core of highly active users (people who check in multiple times a day), with a very, very, very long tail of infrequent/never users.
I have no inside information on this, but I'm also willing to bet that their current daily check-in rate is lower than what it was at their peak. The whole checkin phenomenon came and went, and while it's not gone entirely, it's simply no longer relevant to the mass market. "Millions" of checkins a day is, frankly, very low for a consumer tech product that has existed for 5 years and taken $160mm in funding.
With IFTT and the like, check-ins can be made useful. When I check in to a food place, a note goes to my walking tracking wristband app. I also back them up to spreadsheets, etc. etc.
But check-ins are very much still a thing here in Rio. Of course, I only do check-ins at interesting places anymore (who has the time to fill up their meals in My Fitness Pal or whatever), and so do the four friends I have on Foursquare. It's a more intimate thing.
"It's because check-ins don't work. After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over."
Let's look at the upside of all of this though. And this is an important lesson which shows in part why it's not good to be to smart and know to much. Someone who knew better would know not to even try doing a foursquare type app. To much friction, little reward (long term) and "check-ins don't work". Someone who doesn't goes ahead and gives it a try, builds a company, and now pivots to something else which may very well work. Which kind of dovetails with the VC model. Don't try to hard to think what will work just make a bunch of bets on a team and keep your fingers crossed that something good will happen along the way to failure.
"Do the app stores need to get better at transferring users between apps for situations like this?"
I don't think so. They chose to fragment their user-base. Presumably, they've already got the eyeballs inside their own app to handle the transition. To me - it doesn't seem like something an app store should be expected to accommodate.
A lot of startups make the mistake of doing nothing that will anger their current base of users, but that is not how you grow a company. Facebook is a good example. Almost every move they have made has angered their current users but ended up growing the company (opening up the site to everyone, adding the news feed, etc.).
Personally, I don't want to feel like I'm part of a "userbase", to be "transferred between apps" when convenient.
I guess all that anger and disappointment users express (no matter if they stay like with FB or leave) is due to the fact that they expect someone on the other end who built the app out of passion and maintains it as a service to the community.
How am I supposed to become a loyal user/customer, invite my friends to that service and provide all that data if it's all subject to some corporate strategy, if any middle manager can shut it down if the metrics aren't going up?
I'm sure they have data that says otherwise, but unbundling seems like a mistake. You've got a brand that's still not terribly well-known, and you're fragmenting it further. Demote check-ins if it's not the primary-use for most users ... but keep it as one app. I like their recommendations, and I hope they prove me wrong because it's great data that I'd hate to see lost or simply acquired and absorbed by a 3rd party.
After looking at this post, I kinda want to try out Foursquare as a Yelp alternative. I've never signed up for Foursquare before. So that seems significant.
But two apps? Why? Granted I don't check-in on Yelp very often. But if I feel like it, and it wasn't integrated, I'd never do it. It's a missing but seemingly trivial feature for the main Foursquare app and puts me off a bit.
Enough that I probably won't bother with it.
The whole idea feels incredibly poorly thought out if they were looking for conquest usershare from Yelp.
I'm quite surprised to see the amount of negative feedback here.
I find the new logo quite good looking and communicative, and this "new" Foursquare app is finally something I can see myself using. I have absolutely no interest in the whole check-in thing, but I'm not against good recommendations, so there's a good chance I'll be in the target market for this app, and I suspect I'm not alone in this case.
If it can get very smart about the recommendations it makes, when it makes them, and how frequently, it will become a big part of peoples social lives.
I envision an experience where it knows my friends and I are in a new city together, and because it's early evening, we're probably trying to figure out where to go out for the night.
Bam, notification letting me know the best nightlife spots based on my preferences and those of my friends.
I first heard of foursquare from Fred Wilson, who described getting a recommendation on a specific dish off the menu via a friend through Foursquare.
That was so COOL! Much cooler than "personalized local search". Maybe they could go back to that? I can get recommendations for just a restaurant from lots of apps, but "go to this restaurant and order this dish" is currently underserved, and more useful.
Doesn't Yelp do a reasonably good job of this? I've certainly gotten recommendations from both tips and its "frequently talked about" algorithm (i.e., "carnitas" shows up a lot in reviews of this taqueria).
Team FourSquare (if you're reading this), please ask yourself this question:
If "x" is how much better Facebook was than MySpace, or how much better Google was than Yahoo search, then "x" is how much better you need to be than Yelp to beat Yelp.
Right now, it is debatable if you are even just better than Yelp.
Foursquare doesn't hold a candle to Yelp. I can order food, make a reservation and figure out what's going on in my neighborhood with Yelp. Foursquare has a new logo.
I disagree. Yelp's reviews are needlessly verbose and possibly gamed or filtered according to the store's affiliation with Yelp. I don't have the same concerns re: 4sq reviews.
If we're getting into conspiracy theories, wouldn't gaming Yelp's reviews simply provide more evidence of gamed Yelp reviews?!?!
I've spoken to numerous business owners in NYC who, after having turned down Yelp's super deluxe premier service^, begin to receive negative reviews that make no sense ("terrible service!" during a night the business was closed) or reference nonexistent items ("terrible apple pie!" for a bakery that doesn't offer apple pie).
^ Not the name, but they offer analytics and other services to businesses.
cmon, yelp is broken, I use foursquare has my first choice to locally search and plan and to read genuine short advice from non wannabe poets users. I find yelp closer to tripadvisor because you can easily find negative content about a place, like if a review to be more credible must be negative in some way.
Plus you can order food, reserve a table, see the menu, know if credit cards are accepted, if there's outside seating etc. just to name a few.
The problem with Foursquare is that it was clearly designed by New Yorkers. In other cities where the distance and density of businesses/restaurants/etc. are much lower, the results aren’t as good. The only times where I’ve had a good Foursquare recommendation experience is when I was in Manhattan or in North Beach of San Francisco. Other places, the results just plain suck. In suburbs or midtowns, it isn’t good because the “local recommendations” are a little too small and give me results of places I have no intention of ever going to. Other times, it increases the range to a radius that is far too big.
Yes, and if you live (actively) in any mid-tier city for any appreciable amount time, recommendations become superfluous, because you basically know every establishment in the city, what's trending, what's not, and where to go (and where not to go) to get what you want. For food, clothing and goods. Whatever. And when something new opens up, you hear it about it. Friends give you the rundown, judgements proliferate, etc. I don't have a use for Foursquare or Yelp and, as far as I know, none of my friends do either.
(For size reference, I live in Baltimore, MD.)
Edit: I'll add, too, that "check ins" that get posted socially seem to be viewed increasingly as self-indulgent "look at me and my lovely life" signals.
There was a time that such posts, along with "pics of my delicious dinner at trendy restaurant", etc., were regular and acceptable. That time is quickly passing, I think.
The analogy is talking about how much money you have, or how cultural you are, etc. This isn't really polite and most people secretly roll their eyes in response to it. It appears either calculated or in incognizantly bad taste.
This is just an anecdotal observation, of course. But these kinds of things have basically disappeared from my feed, which might just be an effect of an aging list of friends rather than a broader usage pattern. I suspect it's a generally emerging standard of social media etiquette though.
I never check into restaurants -- I don't see the point. But I regularly check yelp to see reviews of new restaurants that spring up. Then I go check out the new restaurants with good reviews. (I live in Chicago.)
In Chicago, and cities of that size, this makes a lot of sense. It's a huge city. You can live there for decades and still not have a handle on everything. There's too much for word of mouth to render Yelp unnecessary. I'd use it, too, if I weren't in a city 1/10th the size of Chicago.
On the social point... I like foursquare type check-in apps because they work to segregate check-in activity for people who're interested in it. I don't post "I'm at Restaurant X!" on facebook/twitter, because I'd feel like I was spamming people... but if I check in there on foursquare, I know that the people who see that are other people who've decided they want to use foursquare. It's still a social sharing activity, but it's done with a carefully selected subgroup.
I was in Zagreb, Croatia for the very first time last year and wanted to eat dinner somewhere other than my hotel. I tried Google Maps and it was worthless. I pulled out Foursquare and found a restaurant a few streets away that turned out to be incredible! (So much so that when I went back a few months later I went back to the same place instead of exploring.)
And now that I mention it, same thing happened to me in Tallinn, Estonia, too. Found a great brew-pub-ish restaurant that I would have never found on my own. And again, went back a few months later on my next trip.
I'm just saying that SF and NY were where I had GREAT experiences. In suburbs of big cities or smaller towns (Seattle, Redmond, Toronto, Waterloo, suburbs of Toronto), I wouldn't categorize the experience as a "delight" in the same way that SF/NY were.
I mean, do I really have to give a full report in order for me to be satisfied with the product?
I was in Costa Rica looking for somewhere to go for dinner and drinks. Yelp had NOTHING. Foursquare found me an awesome new restaurant/bar a few minutes away that we loved.
I kind of assumed from this experience that Foursquare has better adoption in some areas of the world, but I'm not sure.
I have used it in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Istanbul, Saigon, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Budapest; and I think it gives pretty good recommendations. At least for coffee shops and inexpensive restaurants in the city center.
It also works globally as long as there are some users there, while Yelp only supports a few countries.
I don't think that targeting major metro areas is a bad idea. The downside to making any geo app is that you suddenly have to provide for the whole world, and that isn't possible. Better to prioritise areas where you get the best benefit for your work - and densely populated areas are exactly that.
So if I've never used Foursquare before, which do I install? I'm not interested in having any friends on the app I just think the reviews, and customised recommendations could be quite useful.
It's kind of amazing that this company is still around. They got way more money than they knew what to do with at a way too high of a valuation, the result being this highly polished zombie vestige of a previous era that is too expensive to buy, has too much money to die, and whimpers along with some kind of undefined shrinking user base. It's like a smaller, never IPO'ed version of Yahoo. I don't know how this story is going to end, but I doubt it will involve more people having any of their apps on their phone tomorrow than today, at least willingly. I could see some kind of carrier deal that extends the pain until finally they fall into the arms of a remnant brand hoarding corporation like IAC for pennies.
I have to say, splitting things up makes me think of the whole Netflix-Qwikster thing - pointless brand splitting that does little more than confuse and frustrate consumers.
The intention was to branch off Qwikster and have it slowly die. I actually think it wasn't an awful idea, but that they did it too early. With a terrible name.
I suspect Foursquare want to slowly kill off checkins in a similar way.
Though I don't use it often, I feel an uncannily strong sense of good will toward Foursquare and the company. Probably because they pioneered this stuff. And because of their other company before Foursquare, Dodgeball, which Google bought and lame-ified. I met the team once for two seconds at a conference and they were really sweet happy people.
I hate the new logo with a passion. Why keep the place icon in the bottom on of the F and have the swirl behind it if the whole point of this was to take check-in's out of the app? It's saying you're doing one thing and then doing the opposite of that thing.
Foursquare had great usage all over the world. I've traveled widely (more than ninety countries) and all over Latin America and Eastern Europe Foursquare is regularly used. For some reason, it got a lot of hate from the Bay Area tech crowd who felt its heyday passed -- despite the fact that SF airport was always swarming.
The pressure to keep on growing and have viral growth and turn into a destination app means that app like Foursquare with less mainstream gamifications sadly don't get the respect they maybe deserve, and are forced to try to go viral, etc. which is not a natural path for every app, and there should be a way to fund and let these apps achieve their natural success.
Foursquare location data was great (used by Uber) and it's sad they're alienating the users who provided them this value.
If Foursquare had been bought by FB, Google, Yahoo a few years ago when it had peaked, and then a few years later numbers were down, and engagement became sparse, the parent company would have either de-invested or shut it down.
And then there would have been a slew of articles and criticism about how once again a big company has squandered an opportunity.
Instead we get to see what really happens when the founding team executes a pivot on what is already a pretty successful product and service that has not yet fulfilled the Yelp sized aspirations of its founders, investors and employees.
I kind of liked Foursquare. I don't like the looks of Swarm. And I'm kind of pissed they bug me constantly to install it. I guess they want to kick out the old Foursquare users and make it into a Yelp competitor or something. Haven't really decided what to do. They are taking away my check in functionality so maybe I'll just uninstall it. Why should I go install some new app for what I've always been using.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadI can think of more than a few apps that are more useless.
These "pay attention to me" type apps all seem to do well.
I never used it when it was "hot" (~2012), but in the past few months I've really come to like it for finding places (restaurants, etc.) & making lists. Also, their tools for making edits to the DB are quite impressive, and they do a great job of leveraging superusers to moderate those changes.
I've been able to make a list of bars in big cities such as NYC and rank them by rating using Foursquare data.
SF: https://www.icloud.com/iw/#numbers/BAJgIU7STmBNBkW_ziOBmn5BY...
NYC: https://www.icloud.com/iw/#numbers/BAKlTrL5ohjtIDpPkrOB3UW9G...
So you create an awesome successful grind game. Cool. Next step, either create a new grind game (and hope lightning strikes twice LOL), or find a new line of business to pivot into, or go out of business.
Now I presume they want to broaden the appeal of Foursquare beyond those people that like check-ins, but does that now mean that the check-ins from Swarm continue to power the recommendations in Foursquare? Is it relevant to use the data from early-adopter-types for an app that is meant to have mass appeal?
EDIT: Looks like location data as well.
Foursquare has huge brand recognition, and it would take a long time to build that up for their new app (which will be the way 4Sq makes money going forward).
EDIT: Put the word useless inside the quotes rather than outside — I like 4sq!
This is how I've been using Foursquare for the last two years and have found it to be a more enjoyable experience. The like it or don't like it review model just works better for me, not to mention the reviews on Foursquare are not nearly as painful as ones on Yelp. I think they could have done it without creating such a jarring experience, but I feel they waited too long and now are trying to force it too much.
It's because check-ins don't work. After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over.
So if you're a company whose entire product identity was based on check-ins, you have two choices:
1) Come up with something, anything else that can be plausibly jammed into your app, and run with that; or
2) Go out of business.
Unsurprisingly they went with #1, even if from the perspective of retaining some shred of dignity #2 would have been the better choice.
But that doesn't really matter, because we can resolve the dispute with a simple question: if check-ins were a mass-market thing, would Foursquare (and everyone else who tried them, like Facebook) be running away from them?
The answer is no, obviously. If they worked, companies would be piling in, not checking out. But they don't, so they are.
No, it's not. But neither is
> After the novelty wears off, nobody wants to check in. Nobody. Like those stupid plastic awareness bracelets, check-ins were a fad that flared briefly and is now completely, 100% over.
</Hacker News>
On a similar note, I could list the reasons why checking in is, in fact, nothing like "those stupid plastic awareness bracelets". But that would be a waste of everyone's time.
But since my use of hyperbole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole) clearly touched some deep vein with you, how about this:
"An insignificant number of people, too small to provide a VC-backed startup with even a minimally acceptable exit, want to check in anymore."
Feel free to mentally substitute this version for my earlier, more-fun-to-read-while-still-making-the-same-point version whenever you browse this thread.
You're welcome.
"Literally" also had a second meaning of "figuratively" for the last century or two. So your attempt is, once again, ambiguous.
'Coz there's a huge difference (inasmuch as the Valley might want to forget this).
But the problem, 4sq currently piss off those people who like to check-in. Most of the people I know, don't like Swarm and either have not made the move or stopped using Swarm. I myself, also almost stopped using Swarm. Because they reduced and modified the gaming aspect so that is no fun anymore.
The problem here is, if those people with the check-ins are going missing from the platform, because of those issues. Then the people fulling the database and as such the recommendation engine are going lost. That is long term problem.
The thing is, there was no need to separate it. They could have implemented the personal search the same way as they do it now. They even could have changed to hide or show the Check-in depending on how I have signed in.
There's a lot of merit to this IMO. Foursquare the brand is completely and 100% associated with checking in to places. It seems silly to break the checkin feature into a completely new app, under a completely new brand, while trying to convince everyone that Foursquare is no longer Foursquare but is stilled called Foursquare.
IMO the better move was to keep Foursquare around but launch a separately-branded app for the discoverability.
The number of active people checking in is certainly low, but general mass-market awareness of their (former?) line of business is quite high.
So on top of convincing people your discoverability features are great, you have to first convince them that your app isn't what they already think it is. Personally I think this is very poor branding.
Everything I've seen anecdotally points to Foursquare having a small core of highly active users (people who check in multiple times a day), with a very, very, very long tail of infrequent/never users.
I have no inside information on this, but I'm also willing to bet that their current daily check-in rate is lower than what it was at their peak. The whole checkin phenomenon came and went, and while it's not gone entirely, it's simply no longer relevant to the mass market. "Millions" of checkins a day is, frankly, very low for a consumer tech product that has existed for 5 years and taken $160mm in funding.
But check-ins are very much still a thing here in Rio. Of course, I only do check-ins at interesting places anymore (who has the time to fill up their meals in My Fitness Pal or whatever), and so do the four friends I have on Foursquare. It's a more intimate thing.
I'm not convinced that's ever going to be mass-market behaviour, though.
Let's look at the upside of all of this though. And this is an important lesson which shows in part why it's not good to be to smart and know to much. Someone who knew better would know not to even try doing a foursquare type app. To much friction, little reward (long term) and "check-ins don't work". Someone who doesn't goes ahead and gives it a try, builds a company, and now pivots to something else which may very well work. Which kind of dovetails with the VC model. Don't try to hard to think what will work just make a bunch of bets on a team and keep your fingers crossed that something good will happen along the way to failure.
Do the app stores need to get better at transferring users between apps for situations like this?
I don't think so. They chose to fragment their user-base. Presumably, they've already got the eyeballs inside their own app to handle the transition. To me - it doesn't seem like something an app store should be expected to accommodate.
EDIT: I see now. The rest are non-western comments and ratings a la "good app", 5stars. Totally pointless.
Personally, I don't want to feel like I'm part of a "userbase", to be "transferred between apps" when convenient.
I guess all that anger and disappointment users express (no matter if they stay like with FB or leave) is due to the fact that they expect someone on the other end who built the app out of passion and maintains it as a service to the community.
How am I supposed to become a loyal user/customer, invite my friends to that service and provide all that data if it's all subject to some corporate strategy, if any middle manager can shut it down if the metrics aren't going up?
But two apps? Why? Granted I don't check-in on Yelp very often. But if I feel like it, and it wasn't integrated, I'd never do it. It's a missing but seemingly trivial feature for the main Foursquare app and puts me off a bit.
Enough that I probably won't bother with it.
The whole idea feels incredibly poorly thought out if they were looking for conquest usershare from Yelp.
I find the new logo quite good looking and communicative, and this "new" Foursquare app is finally something I can see myself using. I have absolutely no interest in the whole check-in thing, but I'm not against good recommendations, so there's a good chance I'll be in the target market for this app, and I suspect I'm not alone in this case.
I envision an experience where it knows my friends and I are in a new city together, and because it's early evening, we're probably trying to figure out where to go out for the night.
Bam, notification letting me know the best nightlife spots based on my preferences and those of my friends.
That was so COOL! Much cooler than "personalized local search". Maybe they could go back to that? I can get recommendations for just a restaurant from lots of apps, but "go to this restaurant and order this dish" is currently underserved, and more useful.
If "x" is how much better Facebook was than MySpace, or how much better Google was than Yahoo search, then "x" is how much better you need to be than Yelp to beat Yelp.
Right now, it is debatable if you are even just better than Yelp.
[1]http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco
I've spoken to numerous business owners in NYC who, after having turned down Yelp's super deluxe premier service^, begin to receive negative reviews that make no sense ("terrible service!" during a night the business was closed) or reference nonexistent items ("terrible apple pie!" for a bakery that doesn't offer apple pie).
^ Not the name, but they offer analytics and other services to businesses.
I guess I find Yelp's more in-depth reviews helpful for researching and planning, but too cumbersome for finding things to do on the fly.
Plus you can order food, reserve a table, see the menu, know if credit cards are accepted, if there's outside seating etc. just to name a few.
(For size reference, I live in Baltimore, MD.)
Edit: I'll add, too, that "check ins" that get posted socially seem to be viewed increasingly as self-indulgent "look at me and my lovely life" signals.
There was a time that such posts, along with "pics of my delicious dinner at trendy restaurant", etc., were regular and acceptable. That time is quickly passing, I think.
The analogy is talking about how much money you have, or how cultural you are, etc. This isn't really polite and most people secretly roll their eyes in response to it. It appears either calculated or in incognizantly bad taste.
This is just an anecdotal observation, of course. But these kinds of things have basically disappeared from my feed, which might just be an effect of an aging list of friends rather than a broader usage pattern. I suspect it's a generally emerging standard of social media etiquette though.
I was in Zagreb, Croatia for the very first time last year and wanted to eat dinner somewhere other than my hotel. I tried Google Maps and it was worthless. I pulled out Foursquare and found a restaurant a few streets away that turned out to be incredible! (So much so that when I went back a few months later I went back to the same place instead of exploring.)
And now that I mention it, same thing happened to me in Tallinn, Estonia, too. Found a great brew-pub-ish restaurant that I would have never found on my own. And again, went back a few months later on my next trip.
I mean, do I really have to give a full report in order for me to be satisfied with the product?
I kind of assumed from this experience that Foursquare has better adoption in some areas of the world, but I'm not sure.
You want to look at the websites for newspapers and the like. Rio Show, Veja Rio, etc.
It also works globally as long as there are some users there, while Yelp only supports a few countries.
I do like the new logo though.
I suspect Foursquare want to slowly kill off checkins in a similar way.
The pressure to keep on growing and have viral growth and turn into a destination app means that app like Foursquare with less mainstream gamifications sadly don't get the respect they maybe deserve, and are forced to try to go viral, etc. which is not a natural path for every app, and there should be a way to fund and let these apps achieve their natural success.
Foursquare location data was great (used by Uber) and it's sad they're alienating the users who provided them this value.
And then there would have been a slew of articles and criticism about how once again a big company has squandered an opportunity.
Instead we get to see what really happens when the founding team executes a pivot on what is already a pretty successful product and service that has not yet fulfilled the Yelp sized aspirations of its founders, investors and employees.