Making major decisions for "service, the user base, the team, and the shareholders (pretty much in that order)" doesn't strike me as particularly wise.
In my experience, user loyalty is worth very little. If it suits them, users will happily go and use a competing service that copies everything you do. Caring about the users is noble but a bit misguided since the users don't care about you in the slightest. Of course, people often say "we're doing this for the users!" whether that is the primary motivation or not.
I can see not feeling ready to sell out so soon, though. Foursquare has all sorts of potential and they're well situated to go in a number of directions. For instance, the local review (yelp) direction is natural, and look at the massive valuation Google et. al have considered for Yelp.
So, people have downvoted this with no comment. My comment was not frivolous or abusive: go ahead and tell me why I'm wrong.My assertion is that citing concern about 'the service and the customers' being the major reason they didn't sell out is either false, or a bad choice.
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Making major decisions for "service, the user base, the team, and the shareholders (pretty much in that order)" doesn't strike me as particularly wise.
In my experience, user loyalty is worth very little. If it suits them, users will happily go and use a competing service that copies everything you do. Caring about the users is noble but a bit misguided since the users don't care about you in the slightest. Of course, people often say "we're doing this for the users!" whether that is the primary motivation or not.
I can see not feeling ready to sell out so soon, though. Foursquare has all sorts of potential and they're well situated to go in a number of directions. For instance, the local review (yelp) direction is natural, and look at the massive valuation Google et. al have considered for Yelp.
So, people have downvoted this with no comment. My comment was not frivolous or abusive: go ahead and tell me why I'm wrong.My assertion is that citing concern about 'the service and the customers' being the major reason they didn't sell out is either false, or a bad choice.