Foursquare has been one of those social media “baubles” that are shiny and glittery but, for whatever reason, has never been wildly embraced despite a lot of attention and more than $15-million of venture capital.
Once thought to be the next Twitter, Foursquare was supposed to catch fire a couple of years ago the popular SXSW conference but it flamed out instead.
Sure, it has two million registered users but who knows how many of those are active. Heck, I have a Foursquare account but it’s been collecting dust for months.
There has been a lot of conjecture about Foursquare’s future in recent months over whether it is anything more than a novelty that lets people broadcast their location. The biggest weakness has been that Foursquare has no other features. It’s a one-trick pony.
Heck, if you want to use a service that makes Foursquare interesting and useful, check out our Fourwhere service that shows comments from users on a map in cities around the world. For what it’s worth, Fourwhere also displays comments from Gowalla and Yelp.
If there were clouds on the horizon about Foursquare before, then it’s fair to suggest dark clouds are now rolling in as Facebook has launched a new service that lets people broadcast their location to friends using a mobile phone.
Facebook’s service looks and smells a lot like Foursquare. Facebook is even using the term “check-in”, which has been Foursquare’s catch-phrase.
The question now is whether Facebook’s move into the location-based services market is the beginning of the end for Foursquare. Given Facebook’s dominance and Foursquare’s precious foothold, it could see many of Foursquare’s users flee to Facebook. After all, why use a service with a single feature when there’s another option with multiple features.
The other school of thought is Facebook has now validated the location-based services market, which means that Foursquare and other start-ups such as Gowalla could thrive based on the rising tide lifts all ships theory.
My take is Foursquare’s prospects have become a lot more dim.
If Foursquare had been enjoying Twitter-like success, Facebook’s entry into the market would be significant but not earth-shattering. The fact that Foursquare is still a small player likely means it is about to take a major hit as people migrate to Facebook in significant numbers.
Tags: facebook, foursquare, fourwhere, location-based services
Interesting post. I’m surprised at the number of people who think Facebook’s Places is a Foursquare killer. I seem to have the unpopular view that Facebook is simply playing catch-up to its competition with features like Places (vs. Foursquare) and the Feed Wall (vs. Twitter).
In my opinion, there’s nothing innovative about this new feature. In fact, for me, it’s annoying; now my Facebook news feed will be flooded with “check-ins”. One of the great things about Foursquare is that I can decide when and if I want to open it and see where people are. It appears Facebook will integrate the Places feature into the news feed, so unless there’s a way to filter these check-ins out, I’ll be less likely to scroll through my feed list and see what’s going on.
Also, half the fun of Foursquare is the game-like challenge. Collecting points, stealing mayorships and winning badges gives me a reason to check-in or suggest new places. Besides the deals that occasionally pop-up, what will be the incentive for people to continue to use Places?
I’m afraid I’m just not convinced yet.
Only time will tell, but it will push the competitors to offer a different experience than Facebook. I like Gowalla’s feature that lets you drop virtual items for your friends or random strangers to pick up at the location when they check in.
I haven’t had the chance to use it, but I could see having some fun with the feature.
I haven’t tried Facebook places yet and not sure if I will. I started using Foursquare and still have trouble seeing what the point is (I blogged about it here (“Social Overdose: Checking In and Possibly Checking Out: http://www.sandyksidhu.com/2010/08/18/social-overdose-on-checking-out-and-possibly-checking-out/) and think that only when more vendors embrace it that will it only be more valuable. Until then I’m on the fence about sharing where I am with everyone on my FB.
Now I have to start hiding more people from my feeds, great.
I am not sure whether people want to use Facebook to share location based content. Even though you already share a lot of geogrpahical information through Facebook (via status updates and photo albums). I use FourSquare as a reminder for myself; whenever I’m at a nice venue I check in, so I sort of have my own city guide and remember where I had that delicious coffee or great dumplings. I would like something similar with Facebook, but wouldn’t want to share it with ‘all’ my friends there…
Furthermore, if FourSquare should strengthen it’s GPS system (or whatever system it is), so that if I walk by a nice venue I can check in without waiting for FourSquare to find the place and if not search for the place myself. Saves time and comes in very handy!
Seems to me that this is Facebook’s response to Foursquare not allowing FB to buy it. FB has created a feature. FS is trying to create a type of game. A way to connect locations with people interactively. It will be surprising if Facebook can execute better than Foursquare.
This really the main reason why I do believe Facebook is great for plenty of people.
I would buy a european cell fon with the maps and software included. It is some thing like a full navigation system,. In the USA, the fon and internet rates are much too expensive. So I would not use the traffic news which comes via internet. The fon companies charge too much for the internet service. I think about 20$ extra for the web. I would buy a european cell fon and put a US sim card in.