I'm curious what others think about this. I'm a fan of Foursquare and their team and hope I am wrong about this. I'm also confident they will still have a large exit.
That being said, without a product hook that's very engaging, I think it's hard to build a local ads business, which is what I think Foursquare sees as its revenue stream. Do people see Foursquare differently, as say, an ecommerce company? Do they even need a growing product hook to build a good local ads business?
I agree completely with your post. I've never been compelled to use Foursquare, but have observed friends who were into the original check-in idea gradually pull away because of the force-feeding.
B2C is hard to monetize, period. The Groupon collapse sort of shut one possible revenue door for Foursquare. Twitter can pull off ads because it has a big brand draw that Foursquare just doesn't.
I respect the team, but I don't envy their position.
Having a large exit, and building a vastly profitable business are 2 different things. The former relies on the existence of the greater fool, while the latter actually depends on nailing the business fundamentals. Sadly.. I'm confident there will be a greater fool here too :)
Comments
I'm curious what others think about this. I'm a fan of Foursquare and their team and hope I am wrong about this. I'm also confident they will still have a large exit.
That being said, without a product hook that's very engaging, I think it's hard to build a local ads business, which is what I think Foursquare sees as its revenue stream. Do people see Foursquare differently, as say, an ecommerce company? Do they even need a growing product hook to build a good local ads business?
I agree completely with your post. I've never been compelled to use Foursquare, but have observed friends who were into the original check-in idea gradually pull away because of the force-feeding.
B2C is hard to monetize, period. The Groupon collapse sort of shut one possible revenue door for Foursquare. Twitter can pull off ads because it has a big brand draw that Foursquare just doesn't.
I respect the team, but I don't envy their position.
Having a large exit, and building a vastly profitable business are 2 different things. The former relies on the existence of the greater fool, while the latter actually depends on nailing the business fundamentals. Sadly.. I'm confident there will be a greater fool here too :)
Now if foursquare can improve on Yelp's model and address its faults then maybe?