Why Foursquare is priceless(jasonlbaptiste.com)
jasonlbaptiste.com
Why Foursquare is priceless
http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/four-reasons-why-foursquare-is-priceless/
10 comments
If the mission and market make sense, then you bet on the leader.
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.
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.
The Yahoo of the 1990's made sense. Myspace made sense.
First-mover advantage is not a guarantee in the tech world.
First-mover advantage is not a guarantee in the tech world.
I thought Yelp is the leader in that?
Go ask any random person in a restaurant or spa where they heard about that business. What do you think most answers will be? Yelp or Foursquare?
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.
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.
Yelp is definitely the thought share leader in that category, and I would GUESS the user and revenue leader as well.
Remember when citysearch, shecky's, and zaggat were relevant?
As far as I'm aware, Facebook Places still exists too.
Geocities "existed" for a while too.
Geocities ran for about 15 years. That's longer than Myspace has been around. Let's see where Facebook is in 8 years.
Yelp, not Foursquare, is the clear leader in driving traffic for offline commerce. From my experience, Foursquare isn't even close. Look at your life, look at the people around you. Look at the stickers stores put in their windows. Yelp is what people are actually using to make offline purchasing decisions.
Nonetheless, I like the overall idea of the article about the power of this category, and I hope Foursquare succeeds in doing something great.
Nonetheless, I like the overall idea of the article about the power of this category, and I hope Foursquare succeeds in doing something great.
>YellowPages, the original driver of traffic for offline commerce, is estimated to do 22 billion in revenue in 2015. Think on that for a second. 2015. Yellow Pages. Still going to do 22 billion in revenue
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.
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.
Yep, but I think that's due to the print nature.
Google is a mix of paid and free.
Google is a mix of paid and free.
>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.
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.
Foursquare is not going to be an important company in Meat Space search and discovery. At best they're a niche company. Google is the clear leader. Maps is the killer product, and no one can touch Google, because it takes time and billions to make a proper Maps product. Android, Google Glass, Autonomous cars. They are spending billions of dollars going after this market. In many areas they are decades ahead. If there is any competition to Google here, it will come from Facebook, not Foursquare.
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.
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.
An ambitious goal, but unless they have a clear path to get there, it shouldn't drive their valuation.
I believe they do have a very clear path from all that I've seen.
"What Google built to drive you to what you want in the online virtual world, Foursquare is building in the offline real world"
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.
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.
I would argue that Yelp drives far more offline traffic than Foursquare. If you're going to bet on a market leader, why not them? Have the tech elite written them off for their shady business practices?
Yelp is written off because they went public already. They just need to build other buzzes to get through next few years.
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I don't think that this is all accurate. Foursquare will survive or get bought out like Loopt. I think they'll be in the retention business soon. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5533949
I think kiip, not foursquare would be able to conquer offline commerce.
Kiip from Brian Wong, right? I think it's a big part, but Brian has different/yet just as big ambitions.
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?