Why Foursquare is priceless
jasonlbaptiste.com
jasonlbaptiste.com
So there's three examples of companies that have tried to do this, two of them were outright failures and one is still of questionable prospects, and the takeaway is "you have to believe"?
Why? What if they're all wrong? If it's inevitable, shouldn't we have seen some evidence by this point (years down the road) that people actually want to do check-ins and the like? What if the only way to build a successful business driving offline commerce is to build something that looks nothing like any of the above?
It's not about checkins, it's about being driven to new great places that will delight you in the real world. Foursquare is the leader in that. Google:online traffic :: Foursquare:offline traffic.
First-mover advantage is not a guarantee in the tech world.
Foursquare is not built as a search engine, first, while Yelp is. You check-in first via Foursquare, then you can explore other places, while in Yelp, you're prompted to search for a place.
If you're talking about simply discovering random places, then perhaps Foursquare is the winner, but that market is nowhere near as big as searching for a place. The latter is about capturing intent while the first is about generating interest.
Nonetheless, I like the overall idea of the article about the power of this category, and I hope Foursquare succeeds in doing something great.
The difference is all listings in Yellow Pages are paid - FourSquare allows businesses to be listed for free. At the end of the day businesses must make money, not rely on outside financial injections.
I think FourSquare is in a unique position to create a new feature that could significantly drive traffic, create closer relationships with businesses and generate serious revenue - I have one in mind so I think lack of innovation is the problem.
Google is a mix of paid and free.
Right that paid part is key. At this point Google's search engine is ancillary to their advertising business - admittedly one could not exist without the other and search came first. So you may be right that FourSquare's check-ins are ancillary to their driving offline traffic, but it appears they have not found sustainable revenues to justify their undertaking - if the value was there businesses would pay.
Again I think FourSquare just needs a little innovation, by way of new feature(s), to generate the revenue and significant revenue by my estimates.
The analogy that Foursquare will do to local search what google did for web-search is deeply flawed. Google created the ecosystem for web-search by buying up all the toolbars, and powering everyone else's site search, they they gave away free ecosystem products like gmail to keep people locked in. they pushed all the other players out and the English Language Market into their de facto search monopoly. They have already done this through android and Maps for the local search product.
Foursquare is an app. Google has hardware, an operating system, an ecosystem, and a database that is vastly, vastly larger and better than FourSquare. For Google to copy a Facebook Home like integration with their Maps product in Android, and then offer an AdWords type auction for local businesses to bid on customers in meat space is trivial. It will happen, but not yet, because smartphone penetration is not quite there as far as ubiquity and 'understanding'.
edit: changed offline to meatspace because my usage was confusing, since we're really talking about AFK as opposed to 'offline' which is pretty impossible these days.
I'd argue Google themselves are building that. Looking for a NYC Chinese restaurant? Google it. Looking for a spa? Google it. After Google, it's Yelp, with their depth of informative reviews.
Foursquare's check-in aspect really hurts their desire to be the "google of offline commerce". I don't care if a restaurant has a billion check-ins. And I don't want to hear 1-line random tips. How's the ambience? How's the food? How's the price? Unless Foursquare starts adding in ways for users to give them more in-depth information, Yelp is vastly superior.