Foursquare Merges with Factual

https://www.wsj.com/articles/foursquare-merges-with-factual-another-location-data-provider-11586193000

by leothekim • 6 years ago

210 114 6 years ago

robbiet480• 6 years ago

Wonder what this means for Swarm? It's still a fun game, even all these years later (although seeing lower use I'd imagine during this pandemic).

sonar_un2• 6 years ago

I hope swarm doesn't go away, though I still lament them splitting the apps in two.

chadlavi2• 6 years ago

It's sad how many mistakes they've made with foursquare along the way. The checkin thing was fun, then they moved the only fun part of the app to a mostly neglected junk drawer secondary app (Swarm) and turned the name brand app into just another yelp.

Now it seems it's just going to double/triple-down on the data mining part, and there's no clear indication of what value this adds to the user.

The only thing I really use Swarm for is to keep a little calendar-integrated diary of places I've been (with an IFTTT), but I can do all this myself much simpler and with less data mining. So long, 4SQ.

uptown2• 6 years ago

"there's no clear indication of what value this adds to the user"

The user is no longer the people checking-in. The user are the firms capable of writing large checks to buy insight into market trends before anyone else sees them.

bonzini• 6 years ago

If you don't bring value or fun to the person checking in, they get bored and you get less data to sell.

whoisjuan• 6 years ago

The original 4SQ was awesome, but it was also absolutely non-viable (no business model whatsoever, besides selling branded badges to advertisers).

Putting aside the nature of their current business, I really admire 4SQ ability to pivot and re-invent itself several times, while keeping beloved functionality like the check-in (even if it’s through another app).

This is a company that by all measures should have died in any of those past struggles. They even had a couple of down rounds. And somehow they managed to overcome all those dead-ends.

Very few startups have done that, and I can’t think of a single one that did it at 4SQ’s scale.

chadlavi2• 6 years ago

Yeah, as a business they've been amazingly resilient. I just wish the product was still fun/worthwhile.

randomsearch• 6 years ago

Could the original 4SQ have become the universal loyalty card?

arkanciscan7• 6 years ago

I use Swarm in a similar way; as a diary. Since FourSquare seems to have abandoned that use-case I wonder if there's a better product to be built.

freyfogle• 6 years ago

Lots of creative things could be done for that use case, the challenge is getting (and maintaining) a usable/affordable database of places.

dmix• 6 years ago

Where does Factual get their data from? They've got tons of big name partners, who I assume share it with them, then combine it to get a wider view:

https://www.factual.com/company/partners/

Since Foursquare seems to be caring less about their consumer-facing products I'm guessing they'll shift more towards a collection + analytics style product? Where they integrate with other popular apps instead of collecting their own data.

But I'm just speculating.

soared• 6 years ago

Factual is probably the biggest vendor for selling user location data and audience targeting for advertising, and I would imagine adding in foursquare creates lots of new possibilities for both companies.

texasbigdata• 6 years ago

It would be nice to get a full list. Just phone apps?

codingslave• 6 years ago

The main business model of these two firms is quickly becoming selling location data to hedge funds. This needs to be illegal.

cpitman• 6 years ago

I've really appreciated that Android has started telling me when apps are pulling my location in the background. Every once in a while I am ok with that application doing it, but for the vast majority I immediately disable that app's location access.

After a couple weeks, I'm much more confident that my location data isn't leaking all over the place.

ajayyy• 6 years ago

Both Android and iOS now allow you to give an app location access only while it is in the foreground

dumbfounder2• 6 years ago

They don't need gps location shared to know where you are. They can get this data via sniffing wifi and bluetooth devices in the area (including other phones) and knowing where those devices are.

AznHisoka• 6 years ago

That has been their primary business model for many years now.

I imagine the data from both of them, standalone is quickly becoming flawed/inaccurate. From Foursquare's perspective, less users means less data coming in, and you need a LOT of data for location insights to be meaningful.

kndjckt• 6 years ago

I love foursquare so much. I still use it all the time and in every country I visit. The community is unique and always delivers solid recommendations. There's much less noise when compared with yelp, tripadvisor, and google.

drstewart• 6 years ago

It definitely was my favorite, but it already felt dead for years when I gave it up a few years ago. I occasionally look up reviews there and most of the top reviews are from 2014 or 2015.

sonar_un2• 6 years ago

I use Swarm a lot and it has been invaluable for me to remember places that I have been to. I use it all of the time to remember what places are worth returning to and to tell my friends who are looking for recommendations in certain cities.

duxup3• 6 years ago

I was just thinking about Foursquare when I crossed a foot bridge I (and others) used to check in at all the time.

I remember liking it and then they turned into something(s) else and I'm pretty sure I remember not really understanding what they were supposed to be and I sort of gave up / couldn't figure out why it got so much media talking head attention after that and then ... I don't think I heard anything about it again.

The whole process of "Do a neat thing that isn't really profitable (or at least not a unicorn profitable), then pivot into something else / away from users." thing happens time and again.

Honestly I think I try / don't install as many apps anymore because of such things.

morley• 6 years ago

For me, the Foursquare of today is a more accurate, more up-to-date Yelp. I find it more useful now than when it was first released as a check-in app. Not all pivots are net negatives.

duxup3• 6 years ago

Humm that sounds pretty good. Not the thing I remember liking about it but certainly I could go for something beyond the noise of Yelp with all the "I had a bad time this one time" and "This place isn't as good as that place that is 3x as expensive" or the worst of "I think Pizza Hut is the peak of cuisine but I ended up at this french place and it sucked!" It seems all services sort of devolve into that noise.

srj• 6 years ago

I don't understand why they ever had to be different. Can't you have a rich set of place information, and still have check-ins, mayorships, and all?

I was an avid foursquare user when it first came out. Going to a place your friends hadn't been felt like you were an explorer charting new territory. I used it for years until check-ins were split off. Swarm felt like it was built to be neglected. Like Netflix with Qwikster, they wanted to focus on another area of their business to secure their future and the existing users were a distraction/liability. But given that either pursuit is nothing without engagement, and they had more location-based engagement than anybody, I don't understand the decision making in throwing all that away.

jinushaun• 6 years ago

I joined 4sq after the split because honestly, a more accurate Yelp is what I want. The gamification of check-ins was never going to scale or be sustainable long term. I use Swarm on a daily basis, and the critical functionality it provides me is to remind when and whether or not I (or my friends) have visited a place before.

duxup3• 6 years ago

Sounds like I should give it a spin again.

product503• 6 years ago

Apple needs to deprecate IDFAs and the business models of all these location tracking apps will come crumbling down. If you can't identify users, then the point is moot.

godzillabrennus2• 6 years ago

Doing that basically hands whatever is left of retail after this coronavirus to Amazon.

Brick and mortar has so few tools to compete comparatively. The big guys even buy our data from equifax/transunion to improve marketing efforts.

Karunamon• 6 years ago

If they can't compete without mass privacy violation and tracking, then it is better for all if they fail. This comes off as a pithy dismissal, but these companies have no intrinsic right to our information, and if they've structured their business around it to the point where not having it means they fail, that is their problem at the end of the day.

product503• 6 years ago

This is never a good argument. We can't let these smaller companies completely flout all privacy/tracking rules just so that they can sustain. The model is broken to start with.

rchaud• 6 years ago

B&M has flyers (junk mail) which convert very well, even in 2020. Full color flyers and coupons do a much better job of advertising deals because they go straight to your mail. I throw them away, but I still see the cover page and sometimes that's enough.

Compare that to needing to have some app installed on your phone, tracking you 24/7.

neonate• 6 years ago

https://archive.md/8wYjr

Touche3• 6 years ago

How crazy is it that at one point there were 5 or 6 check-in apps, it was all the rage and now there is essentially 1 (which itself is neglected). There were startups that were getting serious funding with the hopes of being 3rd place in the check-in category.

CPLX2• 6 years ago

I mean Instagram is, in many ways, a check-in app, and is spectacularly successful.

Touche3• 6 years ago

Sure, if you stretch it far enough every social network is in some way a check-in app.

dunmalg2• 6 years ago

No, Instagram is missing the fundamental focus that makes something a "check-in app", i.e. a data presentation hierarchy where "I am at (specific place)" is on top. Instagram's top level of data is "I have picture".

saalweachter• 6 years ago

It makes more sense when you think of it as a game instead of some sort of location sharing system.

Games are popular for a while, then they're not, for no real reason. One year everyone is playing it, the next year no one is, or just an odd collection of dedicated fans. Occasionally you have games that hold on for decades, like bridge or World of Warcraft or Settlers of Catan, but it's just a longer scale rather than true permanence.

reaperducer• 6 years ago

There were startups that were getting serious funding with the hopes of being 3rd place in the check-in category.

I remember one called Whrrl. It was run by a company called Pelago in Seattle, and IIRC was funded by T-Mobile money. I visited its offices a few times. They got cheap office space high up in what was formerly the Washington Mutual Tower when WaMu ate itself.

Touche3• 6 years ago

Interesting. I remember there was a check-in aggregator app, you checked in using that app and it checked you in to Foursquare, Gowalla, and others.

IIRC I think Google Maps might have added a check-in feature... it was a crazy time.

dopamean2• 6 years ago

Some years ago a foursquare founder got forced out of the company (cant recall why) and was bought out by the investors iirc. I suspect he cashed out the most from this whole saga despite how it must have felt and looked at the time.

floatingatoll• 6 years ago

7 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6159963

dopamean2• 6 years ago

Time flies. It really didn't feel like 7 years ago.

fernandopj2• 6 years ago

Sadly that interview didn't reveal that much, only that he left not by choice, and "still hurts him".

The only somewhat objective info about it was that he didn't have a defined role in the company anymore.

mangoman2• 6 years ago

Back in college I used to love Foursquare (about 9 years ago). It was fun, lightweight, addicting (competing to be 'mayor' of my apartment building). Actually I feel like all social media was fun back then. When they split off the actual fun part into it's own app, I knew the fun was just dead. Sure Swarm was more polished, but I didn't really understand why would I move out to another app to do what I was already doing in the Foursquare app. I think a better product owner could have kept it unified somehow.

But alas, Foursquare simply had no way of making money. The often quoted 'How Not to Die' by pg seems especially relevant to foursquare. Compare the company they started out as, to the company they are now. They may not have 'died', but they sure as hell aren't the same company, product, or userbase. They figured how to not die by pulling a Ship of Theseus, replacing fun with features, features with ads, replacing ads with 'tools'.

Is there a way for social media to stay fun and profitable? I guess Instagram is probably the closest thing to staying fun, though for some reason I never latched on to Instagram. Perhaps it's focus on vanity never really resonated with me. When I think of goofy fun, I don't think of Instagram - Instagram is for the beautiful and that's not what I think of myself as.

Reading the line 'Foursquare is No. 1 when it comes to attribution and ad effectiveness, when it comes to app developer tools' is so the opposite of what I considered Foursquare to be when I used it.

fernandopj2• 6 years ago

But alas, Foursquare simply had no way of making money.

Their revenue is 100 MM/year. [1]

You may not (like me) like their pivot then, or business focus, but they do run a successful business.

[1] https://www.owler.com/company/foursquare

mangoman2• 6 years ago

Sorry, I was referring to the OG check-in app. They definitely make money now, but are they really foursquare anymore?

arkanciscan7• 6 years ago

As a long time Foursquare user who switched to Swarm I can say it's still the same FourSquare it always was. It's just as "fun" as it ever was. It's awkward to have two apps on my phone and I hate that product decision too, but it's better than them killing off the check-in feature altogether. That's what Google would have done.

jkestner• 6 years ago

I never used the original app, but use the new FourSquare for discovering food after Yelp grew increasingly anti-user (both consumers and businesses). Makes me cynically wonder how FourSquare is screwing us over.

sneak• 6 years ago

That is precisely what Google did do the first time they bought them, as Dodgeball.

mastre_3• 6 years ago

There are almost no badges in the new app, useless coins (at least if you could upgrade your badges with them as back in the day).. I fail to see how it's the same "fun" as it ever was. I have a few friends that still use it religiously, one day I plan on thinking deeply about what these people have in common because on the surface they seem rather random -- some are technologists, some aren't; all of them are 30+.

I think there is a _lot_ to be done in the field. As with anything these days it would most likely require a large effort with sizable investment, but I think it's an area that's grossly overlooked.

ramraj07• 6 years ago

If you look at their data offerings it's downright creepy to put it mildly. They offer services where they can ping store owners when someone enters their store! I'd trust Google before I trust a company like Yelp or foursquare.

wyxuan• 6 years ago

Four square works with other apps to do the tracking, so it's almost inevitable that you'll be tracked.

meerita2• 6 years ago

I had the same experience. I was truly hooked with 4sq app, documenting all the places i've been, getting mayors, badges, etc. After they made that side app, everything was ok, it made me quit using 4sq right away.

Ayesh• 6 years ago

Gamification with locations can go a long way. Pre-Swamp 4sq, Pokemon Go, and even Google Maps Timeline is addicting. I try to de-Google myself a lot, but at the same time, I find myself perfecting my Google maps timeline so I know the places I've already been to.

naravara• 6 years ago

I kind of wish I had a better idea about the finances for a lot of these applications. Back in the "fun" days part of the reason they were fun was because they didn't need to worry about making money. As they started to try and bring in modes of revenue extraction, they started to feel more user hostile (either in terms of gates and paywalls, excessive ads, or really creepy levels of data harvesting).

But I'm curious if another path was ever available. My gut feeling is that many (not all) of these products probably had perfectly serviceable business models available to them if they were content to just be a fairly unsexy utility with low margins. But the focus on establishing a platform monopoly and/or being a billion dollar unicorn has pushed them all towards these societally maladaptive ways approaches that kind of put people off the whole thing.

I don't have the numbers to back any of that up, though, and I'm not sure anyone does aside from the VC people. But they, understandably, have no incentive to let someone stay in the 7 or 8-figure revenue range when they can push them to add an extra comma instead.

AlphaWeaver3• 6 years ago

Is there a way for social media to stay fun and profitable?

This, exactly this, is one of the reasons I founded VC3 (https://vc3.club). If you're interested in discussing these topics in a purely intellectual way, we would love to have you join us.

csomar• 6 years ago

This, exactly this, is one of the reasons I founded VC3

I did submit an application but I'm confused now. Did you found VC3 to discuss how to build fun and profitable social media sites or is VC3 the fun and profitable social media site. Because it says on the site that it's free and not for profit?

carpetfizz• 6 years ago

Is there a way for social media to stay fun and profitable?

I think Twitter gets pretty close. Sure they have ads (which are unobtrusive for the most part), a bot problem, a bullying problem, an anachronism problem - but that doesn't change the fact that an average user always finds some fun and interesting content on their feed if they're following a curated list of people.

I'm impressed they've been able to keep the experience light on "features" and have kept their core user experience consistent since their perception.

gkoberger2• 6 years ago

(EDIT: Hmm, WSJ frames it as a Foursquare merging into Factual, but both companies are framing it as Foursquare "purchasing" Factual. https://www.factual.com/blog/factual-joins-foursquare/)

I started using Foursquare the day it launched over a decade ago, and still check in to every single place I go... and I don't know why. It might literally be the only habit I actually have. I love having a log of everything I've done over the past decade, it's amazing. It's also so great to see where people I know have been in random countries or cities. It makes the world feel a lot smaller.

I was glad they found a way to monetize it with data, and I really really hope Swarm never goes away :) Great job Dennis and team!

monksy• 6 years ago

Just turn on Google location services. If you want to see where you've been and when, it'll show up on google maps timeline.

I like using that to find out where I've been overseas.

gkoberger2• 6 years ago

There's a signal vs noise issue, and it doesn't feel intentional. I add comments and photos, I mention who I'm with, etc. I much prefer Swarm over Google.

(And, not really the point, but I trust Swarm with my data more than Google, even though I know Google already has it...)

jeromegv• 6 years ago

I prefer Swarm for that. First I decide what I want to check in (restaurants: yes, my condo building, not so much). Also, I prefer manually checkin in than having google track every single place I've been to in my life (i'm on iOS).

jgalt212• 6 years ago

I like it so me and my co-conspirators can keep our lies straight when talking to the police.

greglindahl• 6 years ago

The archived WSJ article says it's an all-stock deal and makes it clear that Foursquare's Chairman and CEO are remaining in place, so I'm pretty sure you're over-interpreting the article title.

code4tee• 6 years ago

The business model of these companies seems in question long term given that they rely heavily on location data “opted in” from users that honestly probably didn’t realize they “opted in” to share their data for such uses.

As more efforts continue (by Apple, Firefox and others) to crack down on that sort of thing the proportion of reality represented by the data such companies hope to sell gets smaller and smaller.

It’s increasingly not “people shop here” but “people with bad privacy settings on their device shop here.”

jboggan• 6 years ago

Whoa! Congrats to Gil and the rest of the team back at Factual. I'm eternally grateful to them for giving this ex-bioinformatician a shot and starting my career as a data engineer, I learned from some of the very best. They were doing some brilliant stuff, both from a technical standpoint and an organizational standpoint, so I am glad to see them continuing forward!

Gil is also responsible for bringing Google to LA when they bought his previous company Applied Semantics so he had a lot of cultural imprint on that office as well.

elwell2• 6 years ago

+1 for Clojure companies

arobbins• 6 years ago

They aren't much of a Clojure company at this point. Also laid off most of the remaining Clojure devs today.

hkmurakami• 6 years ago

Jake, I remember we chatted a bit way back when you were still at Factual. Great to see them get to this point. Hope you've been well!

nightvoomer• 6 years ago

I remember you referring me to Factual 8 years ago. Thanks for that! I didn't get hired, but it kicked off a life long interest in functional programming due to meeting with Aaron Crow during that interview.

driverdan2• 6 years ago

Cheering on another privacy invasive parasitic company? We need more of these ad tech companies failing and legislation banning their existence.

It's nice that they gave you a job but I hope you've moved on to something that contributes to society.

arkanciscan7• 6 years ago

I've used FourSquare/Swarm a lot but I have also developed apps using their API. I've been watching their documentation stagnate and I was worried that the API might get shut down entirely due to 4sq shutting down. Glad to see they are still alive. Hopefully this gives them incentive to improve their docs, and support.

davmar• 6 years ago

next up: yelp & groupon

maxerickson• 6 years ago

Does groupon have a meaningful amount of incoming data?

xster• 6 years ago

AFAIK, Foursquare was also the first mobile app to start the if-you-think-there-are-tabs-your-users-don't-use,-now-they'll-really-never-use-them-again-in-a-separate-app trend.

I thought they still had a pretty good differentiator making an effort to make recommendations in the main app based on your specific food tastes etc. Too bad they were a bit half hearted focusing on it.

kitotik• 6 years ago

Long live Gowalla!

But seriously, Foursquare pivoted away from consumers and went down the data broker path many, many years ago. 2011 maybe?

As much as I despise both of these companies and their business models, the merger makes a ton of sense.

skinnymuch• 6 years ago

I miss Gowalla! Wish I backed up the data.

rsp19842• 6 years ago

Can anyone here explain how Foursquare's business works? It seems like they are capitalising on location data that they gather from devices, but AFAIK the Foursquare and Swarm apps are pretty much dead.

So how exactly are they getting possession of the location data? Or is that not even their biggest source of revenue?

Just genuinely curious.

kevstev• 6 years ago

I interviewed there a few years back- I actually really liked the team there and came close to taking a less lucrative offer to work there. To the best of my knowledge, this is not in any way secret information, its just not widely known.

Foursquare is essentially a service for other apps at this point- They are a library embedded into many apps. Foursquare is likely on your phone somewhere. The app owner gets a whole lot of location data "for free", and Foursquare gets is own copy. They give you analytics on the data fed to them- the details were not laid out to me, but its not hard to fill in the blanks here- how many people walked into your store that day- how many people walked into your store after you covered that zipcode in an ad campaign, etc, what is the shape of your traffic in terms of people coming in from 9-10am, vs 10am-11am (helping them refine their staffing) etc... None of this couldn't be built themselves, but its already built and refined, and more refined.

On the flip side, there are some very lucrative uses for this data in aggregate. I am a hedge fund, and I want to know how many people are walking into a Macy's, or Chipotle after its dust-up, or even an entire mall (to get some edge on the owner's health). Right now it would probably be very interesting to look at someone like Home Depot's foot traffic- they are "essential"- but is anyone going? Combine this with some data like Yodlee (for e-commerce- they sell gift card data) and you can get a quite accurate model for where their revenue is going to land. Hedge funds are willing to pay a lot of money for this type of data.

This was the state of affairs 3 years ago, things may have evolved since then.

rsp19842• 6 years ago

Hey, thanks for your comment! This definitely makes sense. I just wonder how they are able to gather this location data.

From my naive point of view, most people have their phones on standby in their pockets with GPS turned off most of the time while they go shopping. And even if it is turned on they are probably using Whatsapp or Insta. So, in a real life scenario, what circumstances would have to come together for Foursquare to successfully collect data?

maxdo• 6 years ago

Still using foursqure over yelp for reviews.

ChrisArchitect• 6 years ago

the split of the apps wasn't detrimental. Swarm is for your daily/weekly checkins to places - acts as a diary/bumps up the activity on restaurants etc

Foursquare is great when you're away/on trips/in a foreign city - to look up places to visit, get recommendations, make planning lists etc. Proven useful for me for many years.

nunez• 6 years ago

This was the only somewhat-popular alternative to Yelp and Google Reviews. Sucks that their City Mapper service will probably go away.

andrewacove• 6 years ago

I lived in New York for a good chunk of Foursquare's life, and while it was magical, at least half of the population hated the concept, for good reason. Every woman I knew who had used it was terrified by the privacy and safety risks engendered by making their location public. The ones who did check in somewhere would typically only do it as or after they'd left. The "magical power" to see through walls that Dennis touted was a nightmare for women, who already deal with constant harassment and stalkers in the city. Which was a shame, because it really could feel magical to meet up with friends because of where you'd checked in.

For a while, Foursquare also had the most reliable review data – or at least its users tastes better aligned with mine. It was refreshing to get useful content about a restaurant without reading through paragraphs of self-indulgent drivel on Yelp. But after the launch of Swarm, the reviews more or less rotted over time.

The founders of Foursquare got to take a lot of money off the table in a relatively early round, ($8M each? Series C?), which is something I'd love to get the present perspective on from investors and employees who were there along the way.

NoblePublius• 6 years ago

EBITDA is not profit

sharma_pradeep• 6 years ago

About time

Foursquare Merges with Factual

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