I love how companies “cooperate” in the tech industry. Twitter recently “helped” out TweetMeme by giving them another business to focus on. Facebook has now “helped” out Foursquare by making them wonder what’s next. They also welcomed the company up on stage to announce that they would … GASP … consider what to do with Facebook Places! Apparently Foursquare will eventually have Facebook integration, however right now they are working on their own product roadmap and don’t have the resources to integrate.
Contrast this with Booyah who’s already launching a new application, called InCrowd, on the back of Facebook’s Places API. Granted, Booyah has most likely been pressured by investors to integrate with Facebook’s new services, however one would imagine that the new Places services provides Foursquare with a significant opportunity which they’d want to jump on quickly.
Foursquare happened to be the highest profile company to speak at the event because they were the most at risk of being damaged by Facebook Places. Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare, is still optimistic however, despite appearing to be left in the dark on this one. He told VentureBeat, “If Facebook thinks that location is a good idea, then we are on to something.” Yes Dennis, you were definitely on to something, which is why Facebook just integrated a lot of the existing service’s functionality.
Granted, Foursquare users may not run for the door right away, but it’s only a matter of time. With 2 million users, there’s no way Foursquare users have the majority of their social graph using the product. Instead, a small group of people use the product and now Foursquare will need to figure out a major shift to their product (aka. “Pivot”). Facebook has learned their lesson from the Twitter experience: don’t let a potential competitor get too large. Acquire them or duplicate them early on.
Update
As Techcrunch pointed out, Facebook’s new places logo also happens to be the number 4 in a square. Coincidence?
Update 2
Facebook has let us know that Foursquare actually had early access to the API but hasn’t yet launched anything. Instead they are figuring out what they want to do with the API.
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Have you thought Booyah (InCrowd) only got early API access because they completely getting rid of there current applications and making a new one from scratch
Even Zuckerberg needs to offer some help!
Abit of hint of fanboi in this blog post as not laying into Yelp and Gowalla as well as they had not much to show either like Foursquare they also given a carrot and took it and Foursquare the most known and successive until the launch of Places!
Comment by Jamie Ellis — August 18, 2010 @ 9:43 pm
Foursquare and Yelp are sources of places for Facebook, as I realized
from that link.
If the link doesn't work I took a screenshot here
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6721877&...
Comment by Maurizio Mazzanti — August 18, 2010 @ 10:16 pm
The link is http://www.facebook.com/search/?flt=1&o=65&am...
Comment by Maurizio Mazzanti — August 18, 2010 @ 10:28 pm
Nick, will you use Places? You've previously written about how you did not use Foursquare or any other location based service (lbs) because you did not see the value. I completely agree with your position on LBS but I wonder if you will use it now that it is part of a social network you regularly use.
Comment by Will Samolis — August 19, 2010 @ 4:28 am
There's a core of users that won't leave Foursquare for Facebook, or will run both together, just as people run Twitter and Facebook. But it won't work as well. People use Twitter for sharing with the world, and Facebook for sharing with their friends, right? I just don't think location info is something many people want to share with the world, so I think the potential base for Foursquare is small.
Having said that, the real threat to 4Sq now is surely Twitter. Twitter's the only other social network most people use other than Facebook and it's already enabled adding location to a tweet. If they add some way to check-in without leaving a message, Foursquare will be screwed.
But, Twitter are showing no signs of actually doing that. So my advice to 4sq: screw Facebook, stay very close to Twitter, and suck up as many of their users as you possibly can.
Comment by Rav Casley Gera — August 19, 2010 @ 7:47 am
If anyone is located in the New York area and wants to learn more about the Facebook Places API, I am organizing a Facebook Developer Garage on September 1. More details here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102630619790731&ref=ts
One of Facebook’s Partner Engineers has signed up to deliver the keynote and will be touching on the Places API.
Hope to see you there!
Meg
Syncapse Corp.
twitter.com/MegSinclair
Comment by Meg Sinclair — August 20, 2010 @ 10:48 am
Contrast this with Booyah who’s already launching a new application, called InCrowd, on the back of Facebook’s Places API. Granted, Booyah has most likely been pressured by investors to integrate with Facebook’s new services, however one would imagine that the new Places services provides Foursquare with a significant opportunity which they’d want to jump on quickly.
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Comment by gadget | technology — November 15, 2011 @ 10:41 pm