Archive for category Buzz

Foursquare’s crowd-sourced US travel guide

Posted by Chris Thompson in Buzz on February 3, 2012

NA - Map of the USA, the British provinces, Mexico, the West Indies and Central America, with part of New Granada & Venezuela - map drawn by Geo. W. Colton - engraved by John M. Atwood border desig'd.and eng'd. by W. S. Barnard NYPLPerhaps the greatest thing to come from foursquare’s city badge contest isn’t the badges themselves, but instead the wealth of lists that have been created for cities big and small all over the US. Each has been assembled by users who are very familiar with the best of what their town has to offer. When put together, these lists essentially comprise a crowd-sourced travel guide to some of the country’s best spots.

I don’t have plans to visit any of these cities in the near future, but I’ve followed them all in case I do end up visiting. That way I’ll be able to quickly pull up the local list and know exactly which places I should hit while I’m in town.

I’ve left out lists that don’t include tips and photos for most of the venues, because that’s really the beauty of foursquare lists. A simple list of places doesn’t hold much meaning by itself.

If you’re curious, Anthony Rodriguez has been keeping a ranking of the most followed lists. That, of course, is just one component of the judging, but it is interesting to see which have been the best promoted.

Which list is your favorite? Have I missed any that should be on this list?

 

/Map CC licensed by leiris202 on Flickr.

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New foursquare intro video distances them from the check-in

Posted by Chris Thompson in Buzz on January 26, 2012

Foursquare last night unveiled a new video that appears on their logged out homepage. It gives users a sense of what foursquare is really about, but perhaps most telling are the things that aren’t mentioned.

As you’d expect, the new video focuses heavily on the recommendations aspect of foursquare. It also speaks to keeping up with your friends with photos and comments and redeeming deals offered by local businesses. In the 59 second video, “check in” is used exactly once (and then only in reference to unlocking specials).

Compare that to their previous video, created in April of 2010:

Checking in is mentioned at least five times by name, and referred to in other ways a few more times than that. Badges, points and mayorships take up a hefty portion of the old video, but you won’t find a single mention of them in the new one.

With this video, foursquare has distanced themselves as far as they can from many of the things they originally became known for, when they were often referred to as a “check-in service” or a “location-based game.” It now reflects more closely what foursquare’s founders wanted to build all along — a social city guide — and lays out exactly where the service is headed.

When you look at those two videos side by side, it almost appears that the company has executed one of the most artful startup pivots ever, but that’s not the case at all. Those check-ins, points, badges and mayorships were never anything more than a ploy to get people to keep pulling out their phones and sending their location to foursquare, all while the company was building up the huge data set they needed to power recommendations and other features.

Listen closely to the old video and you’ll hear a lot of the same ideas presented in the new one, like recommendations and “making your city easier to use.” There’s no mistaking that foursquare was on exactly the same path then as they are now.

Sure, the badges and mayorships are a fun diversion, but the real meat of foursquare has been, and always will be, the tips and recommendations they’re able to provide. Foursquare won’t kill the gaming aspects anytime soon (if ever), but they’ll continue to take a back seat.

So, is the check-in dead? No, not at all. It’s evolving. Foursquare has transitioned to a service where you can get value, in the form of recommendations, without ever checking in. Check-ins, though, will remain an important part of the service. They keep the huge data monster fed and happy, after all. Foursquare must (and no doubt will) find ways to make checking in a more natural act to keep them coming.

In many ways, this video is the culmination of everything we’ve seen from foursquare over the last few weeks. They’re finally coming out of the closet, so to speak, and telling the world what they’re really about. It’s been a long time coming.

PS I think I’m in love with the dancing burrito.

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Foursquare adds tool for superusers to check up on their past merges

Posted by Chris Thompson in Buzz on January 19, 2012

One of the best features of the SU Tools extension is its ability to remember the merges you’ve submitted and present a list of them so you can go back and check them later. You can even add comments to explain why you’d denied a merge.

Foursquare has now incorporated those features into their own admin panel so they’re available to all users, not just those who’ve installed the extension. The “Check Yo Flags” (yes, that’s really what they’re calling it) feature lists all your past merge requests and see if they’ve been approved, rejected or are still pending.

If they’re rejected, there’s a column to show exactly why. That comes from a new feature in the merge queues that allows superusers to add reasons and comments when rejecting a merge. This gives experienced superusers (only SU2+ can approve or deny merges) an opportunity to educate new superusers instead of just rejecting the same bad merges over and over.

For rejected merges, there’s an easy one-click option to resubmit the request if you think it was improperly denied.

While it’s by no means the most important thing foursquare is working on, Check Yo Flags is a nice sign that they’re still working on developing new tools for superusers and making their database easier to keep clean. That they’ve basically lifted the feature from a third-party app is a good thing, because now it’s available to everyone by default. SU Tools still has plenty of helpful features that make it a must for serious superusers.

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Foursquare continues to chip away at Yelp; introduces menus right on the site

Posted by Chris Thompson in Buzz on January 18, 2012

When restaurant prices began to appear on the foursquare site last week, it was really just the beginning of something much larger. Beginning today, they’ve incorporated menus for many restaurants directly on the site and will soon be bringing them to the mobile apps. The move propels foursquare to the forefront of the local search space.

A link to the menu now appears in the sidebar of the venue page for many restaurants. The list includes not only large, popular restaurants, but many smaller local restaurants, too; more than 250,000 are already listed. I’m reasonably sure my local Thai place has never heard of the internet, but their menu is right there on the foursquare site.

Foursquare is drawing the data from SinglePlatform, a service that helps restaurant owners publish their menus and prices online. It’s available on the website (desktop or mobile) and in the API right now and will be incorporated into the mobile apps soon.

Showing menus is, of course, a huge benefit to anyone searching for a restaurant and sets foursquare apart from many other local search services. The real benefit will come, though, when foursquare indexes the menu data and lets you search for very specific things right from the Explore interface. By knowing the actual menu items, foursquare doesn’t need to hope that a user has entered Squid with Hot Pepper as a tip. They know the restaurants that have it and can filter that through the data they’ve gleaned from your and your friends’ checkins to find the best place around for you to get it.

With this integration, Yelp and others like them should be very scared. Foursquare is coming after them by adding feature after feature that make them a real contender in the local search space. The data foursquare has on the places people actually visit is second-to-none and puts them in the lead when it comes to offering targeted recommendations, which is what users are really looking for.

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Ashton Kutcher’s foursquare account gets hacked

Posted by Chris Thompson in Buzz on January 16, 2012

Over the weekend, Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter account (with 9.2 million followers) showed three tweets that seemed to confirm a relationship with Lorene Scafaria, with whom he’s rumored to be involved. It turns out the three posts came from Kutcher’s foursquare account, which someone accessed without his permission. Kutcher will get the last laugh, it seems, since the hacker was incredibly careless about covering his tracks.

The posts started appearing early Sunday morning, saying things like “First official sleepover with my girl @lorenescafaria so maybe breakfast with everyone next time! (@ Lorene’s House) [LINK].” The posts have all been deleted, but not before they were archived by celebritytweet.com, as seen below.

While the posts appeared on Twitter, each shows the source as foursquare, where Kutcher’s account is connected to Twitter, allowing anyone who accessed his foursquare account to post directly to Twitter. The tweets all point to the same “Lorene’s House” venue on foursquare.

About six hours after the posts hit Twitter, Kutcher took them down and posted a few tweets about the incident. These, too, have been removed.

It appears the next time Kutcher logged in to his foursquare account, he was able to see the last location where he’d been checked in, the so-called Lorene’s House. He posted a screenshot of the foursquare homepage to Twitter, along with a message to the hacker: “I’m coming for you my friend.”

The “hacker” (who I’ve chosen not to name) was incredibly careless about concealing his location, making it easy to determine (with pretty good certainty) who he is. That spot matches up exactly with another foursquare venue, whose mayor just happened to check in to the Lorene’s House venue (and posted it to Twitter), minutes before Kutcher’s check-in.

Surely Kutcher, who’s computer-savvy and known as a prankster, has already put these facts together and is plotting his revenge.

It’s unknown how the hacker was able to access Kutcher’s account. The most likely scenario is that Kutcher’s account used a password that was relatively easy to guess.

Kutcher is an early foursquare investor. In his new role on Two and a Half Men, he’s shown the foursquare logo (along with other companies he’s invested in) in the form of stickers on his laptop several times.

How do you think Kutcher should get revenge?

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Foursquare’s 36 Cooper Square office closes for the last time

Posted by Chris Thompson in Buzz on January 13, 2012

Today was foursquare’s last day at their original offices at 36 Cooper Square. Movers are already working to get everything moved into their new office at 568 Broadway.

The day has been filled with lots of remembrances by the team on Twitter, foursquare, Instagram, and more. After the jump you’ll find some of the best.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Foursquare redesigns brand pages to focus more on recent activity

Posted by Chris Thompson in Business, Buzz on January 13, 2012

Foursquare has launched a redesigned version of their brand pages that puts much more emphasis on the brand’s activity on the service. The new look presents the most fresh information right at the top of the page to keep users engaged and coming back.

Brand pages now start with the description at the top of the page, followed by photos the brand has posted (including a link to a gallery of all the photos they’ve posted). Next come any recent check-ins the brand has posted, along with in-line photos, much like you’d see on the foursquare homepage.

Some of the best examples of brands whose pages work well in the new style are ESPN and Nokia.

Tips and lists — the way brands show their expertise on a topic — have moved farther down the page (unless the brand hasn’t posted any photos or check-ins). While tips are perhaps the most important ingredient to a brand’s exposure on foursquare, they tend to change the least often. Once a tip becomes popular, it moves to the top of the list and tends to stay there, meaning the top tips change rarely.

Moving the recent activity to the top (instead of the sidebar), and giving a heavy emphasis to the visuals, gives followers a reason to revisit the pages they follow. I’m sure I’m not the only user guilty of visiting a page, clicking the follow button and then never once going back; foursquare’s internal metrics likely bear this out for just about everyone.

The new look should increase the engagement brands see on foursquare from users and serve as an encouragement for them to stay engaged themselves by posting check-ins and photos on a regular basis. These pages should also be much more appealing to brands’ social media managers who are used to the constantly-updated style of Twitter and Facebook and will likely encourage more to get involved.

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Another small challenge to the Yelp crown: price ranges appear on the foursquare site

Posted by Chris Thompson in Buzz on January 12, 2012

Foursquare is serious about local search. Today’s launch of Explore on the web proves that, but there are other little things that foursquare has been adding recently that point to their desire to be a one-stop shop for location information. The latest addition shows you the price range of select restaurants right on the foursquare venue page.

It’s something Yelp shows on every page (along with lots of other data like hours and whether a place accepts reservations), and is incredibly helpful when determining whether or not you want to visit a place.

In fact, it’s so helpful that foursquare has added it directly into the listings on their new Explore page. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also a data point being used by Explore (e.g., “this user has visited lots of expensive restaurants, so show more of those in the Explore results.”)

The price range information appears to come from Zagat, where (oddly enough) it’s only available to subscribers.

You’ll notice that one thing foursquare doesn’t include on the venue page is hours. It’s an incredibly complicated piece to add and keep updated accurately (hence why it briefly appeared on the foursquare site in September and was quickly taken down). Up to now, foursquare hasn’t really needed it, since Explore knows when people typically check in to a place and thus only recommends places that are open. With the new desktop version of Explore, however, it takes on new importance since people could be searching for places to visit well into the future. I expect we’ll see it return to venue pages in the near future.

What do you think of the addition of price ranges? Should foursquare include hours on venue pages as well?

/Thanks to Geoff Gauchet for pointing this out!

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Foursquare mounts their biggest challenge to Yelp by bringing Explore to the web

Posted by Chris Thompson in Buzz on January 12, 2012

Foursquare’s Explore is great for recommending things to do here and now, but when it came to using all that data to find something to do in the future or in a different place, Explore fell behind other services like Yelp and Google Places.

That all changes today with the launch of Explore on the web.

Foursquare users can now get recommendations for anywhere in the world right from their desks. It takes each user’s individual preferences into account — based on their checkin history — and combines it with things their friends like and other data gleaned from more than 1.5 billion checkins to come up with targeted recommendations.

Instead of just searching nearby as in the mobile app, Explore on the web lets users search any location in the world. They can browse by category (food, arts, coffee, etc.) or search for a specific thing like “tacos” or “pad thai.”

Explore on the web also brings new filtering options. Users can filter the list to show only places they haven’t been before, or to see places their friends have been to, for example.

It represents foursquare’s deepest foray yet into what they hope will be the future of the service — recommendations — and marks foursquare’s biggest threat to local search that up to now has been dominated by Yelp and Google Places. The breadth of data foursquare has on the types of people who visit certain places and each user’s preferences gives it a significant leg up on the one-size-fits-all searches provided by others in the space.

After years of Amazon and Netflix recommendations on books and movies, users have come to expect a local search experience that’s tailored to their tastes. That takes data — lots of data — and with almost three years of it (helped along by the early gamification techniques used to encourage it), foursquare is uniquely positioned to provide those types of recommendations on a local basis.

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Foursquare hits 500,000 lists

Posted by Chris Thompson in Buzz on January 10, 2012

It’s been just under five months since foursquare launched their lists feature. In that time, half a million lists have been created, according to foursquare UX designer Pierre Valade. That’s a rate of more than two lists every minute.

Foursquare’s lists are incredibly versatile, offering a combination of venues, tips and photos with a slick map integration. Originally they could only be created on the website, but came to the iPhone app in September and other mobile apps after that. Mobile integration made them even easier to use by offering a way to catalog venues on the go. They received renewed focus with the November website update, getting their own page focused solely on discovering nearby lists.

The initial use case focused on creating lists of the best bars in a city or places for tourists to visit, but users quickly took the concept and ran with it, creating all sorts of unique lists. They’ve been used to catalog the history of foursquare (it’s even linked from the foursquare about page), the lives of rappers like Tupac Shakur and Jay-Z, and the best places to photograph in New York or Cincinnati.

The numbers show that foursquare is on to something with lists. Unlike check-ins, lists aren’t core to the foursquare experience, so it takes a bit of effort for users to understand and create them. With more than 500,000 created, it’s clear that foursquare has created a product that’s easy to use and helpful to users.

If you’re looking to create a list, see our tips on creating lists that get noticed. Share your favorite lists in the comments.

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