Tag : Foursquare

Those of you who know me probably know by now that I’ve gone off Foursquare. It seems like a mystery to some, because I was once what some people, at least, would call a ‘super-user’; indeed, though I wasn’t officially nominated as one on the Foursquare Get Satisfaction page, I regularly (at least a couple of times a week) found myself notifying Foursquare of duplicate entries, address errors and so on.  I checked in everywhere I went, and by that I mean even in bars I found myself in at 2am in the morning on a Saturday, or a tube stop that I found myself at in between my daily commute, as long as it had network reception. I didn’t have an excuse for not going anywhere I was invited to by a Foursquare friend, because they’d know where I was.

But then last month, I got fed up and stopped using it. I’ve been asked by a few people to write about why I suddenly exited Foursquare, so here goes.

I wrote about Foursquare recently, and thought it would be interesting to follow up, given the fact that the location-based service recently hit the 2 million users mark. So what’s happened since then in the location-based services world? Some key happenings:

- Gowalla is lagging way behind Foursquare as far as users are concerned, and even advertising on billboards doesn’t really help.
- Nevertheless, Gowalla plods on (as they must), and focuses on beauty with the launch of the iPhone 4. Utility will always trump beauty in my opinion, though obviously both together is ideal.
- Whole Foods agrees to stick Foursquare decals in the windows of their stores.
- The Boston Globe is encouraging people to discover more about the city with a location-based check-in service that is neither Foursquare nor Gowalla: SCVNGR

So things are definitely hotting up. What’s next? Apart from the most obvious – more businesses signing up to services like Foursquare to get to know their customers better and encourage repeat business, here’s what I think:

I’m probably not the best company nowadays to non-Foursquare users, because checking in has become almost an obsession. When I’m too immersed in the events or conversation of an evening to check in, I mentally kick myself when I realise the fact later at home. I like that I’m still discovering new things about the service on a regular basis. Of course, it isn’t perfect – there continue to be a few bugs with the service which frustrate me no end when I encounter them, but in general the boys at Foursquare seem to have a good thing going. At 1.3 million users, Foursquare is almost 7 times as popular as the next most popular location-based service, Gowalla, despite the latter winning in the Mobile category at SXSWi 2010. (The latest edition of Wired UK has a nice article about the founders and evolution of both).

One of my favourite talks at SXSW was by Andy Baio from Kickstarter, called Gaming the Crowd. Andy spoke about designing for increased participation through reputation systems. In fact, he killed the wonderful myth I had that leaderboards rock. Apparently they don’t, because if you’re not in the top 10, you’re disincentivised to participate.

Leaderboards aren’t always fun

There was a phase when I played Crazy Taxi (now called Crazy Cabbie) on Facebook and the mere sight of that leaderboard would make me grit my teeth and want to somehow beat whichever friend of mine was on top (I have since stopped playing it, having taken voluntary retirement from the game because I saw I was becoming obsessed, which is another thing Andy spoke about). The benefit there was that there were two kinds of leaderboards for that game – one that was relevant to you because it included your friends who were playing the game, and the other a global one which was really not much use because a) you didn’t know the people who had the high scores there and b) usually their scores were way higher than your top friends’ scores, so much so that there was no way you’d be able to get that far – so you didn’t bother. Or, in other words, it wasdisincentivising me, except I didn’t realise it at the time. In general, in MMOs, it is in the interest of the game to ensure people don’t burn out, according to Andy, and leaderboards often result in that, as they did with me.

Justin’s ‘Agile versus Strategy‘ post has tapped an excellent debate.

One of the most interesting comments comes from R/GA’s William Charnock, who makes the point that traditional ad agencies got rid of ‘the makers’:

They outsourced production to directors, photographers, digital technology specialists etc and carved off media execution to separate media agencies. With no ability to prototype, experiment or execute in the real world, the only option for them was to focus on ‘conceptual thinking’ or ‘BDUF’.

Some forward thinking agencies seem to be addressing this, if only on a small scale, setting up labs for experimentation (a la Ogilvy, BBH, Media labs etc.); creating partnerships with content creators, VC’s and start-ups (who truly are the leaders in market agility and fast fail learning/prototyping).

As William and other commenters say, it’s the start-ups who are the true leaders in this space – not least in terms of overall value creation. Indeed, you could argue that the ‘start up culture’ of high-growth tech start-ups has become a defining (and disruptive) force in work cultures well beyond tech, marketing and media.

There are so many good things about SXSWi but the best thing for me – by a long way – was the people.

I know, it sounds a bit soft but I’ve come back feeling totally inspired and re-energised about The Web and what we do - and it’s all down to people and the non-stop, super-social whirlwind of South-by. It was relentless and provided a very welcome opportunity to trade up the online relationships formed in the preceding 12 months. Hundreds of Twitter avatars became real people. We got to know them a bit in real life. We played Foursquare with them – winning badges and tattoos. We chatted like loons, we ate chili-dogs and tacos, we drank quantities of Tequila, and we danced…for real, in meatspace, and it was good.