Foursquare split logic: the force will recommend and search

In 2013, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley spent the year trying to tell the world that Foursquare was no longer what it used to be. And now, the Foursquare app is going to be split (with a new app, Swarm) that is battling fights against Yelp and is going to go beyond the "check-in" artifact in the mind.

In 2009, the Foursquare company stood out from the crowd with a dazzling "check in." Novelty plus local information has led to the accumulation of tens of millions of users for Foursquare, hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, and billions of "sign-in" messages. However, the problem is, until 2014, for Foursquare, this story is no longer a good old man, but the classic has become the crux of the development of the company dragged down.

"In fact, what the company wants to do is never just an excellent sign-in button," Crowley said. When time went back to 2009, it was still necessary to mark out the location of the user - when the phone was not well developed to accurately mark the location, and Foursquare did not have much data for the surrounding area.

By 2014, when technology and data are finally maturing, Foursquare is still struggling to reach the mainstream and subscriber growth is overtaken by young start-ups. Foursquare brings new location sharing mode, but not as good as Snapchet selfie, link sharing, tweeting so popular.

So Crawley decided it was time to take a radical approach: "If we no longer need to have users sign in? If there is a version of Foursquare, no one opens it and you ask for it." In the past six months, The Foursquare team worked hard to "make a difference" and ultimately decided that to turn the tide needed to be split - to split the original iconic service into two separate applications.

Now, Foursquare has brought the fruit of change "Swarm" - this application will co-exist with the current Foursquare applications. Swarm is like a social heat map, helping users find nearby friends and sign in to share location information; the completely updated Foursquare app will meet with people in about a month. The new Foursquare abandons the "check-in", instead focusing on exploration and discovery, this positioning is more like "Yelp killer", will be in the local search battle bloody battlefield.

User needs after the differentiation of the dilemma

Foursquare's new era begins in a room called Do not Stop Believing. Crawley and his executives gathered to spend years planning the mobile app repeatedly - moving the button location and changing the language. Finally, after some minor hits, Foursquare ushered in a big change. In November 2013, Crowley "smashed" existing applications into one basic component - just like LEGO bricks, each one represented a basic function. From scratch, remodeling Foursquare.

One of them is Pilgrim - an application for guessing the user's location, and the other is location information - an information database of 60 million roads and attractions that have been collected. In 2014, the R & D team had conceived of several possible modalities for home-based services, but all have one thing in common: the functionality needs to be unitized.

Foursquare to establish a new party is not a decision-making, but depends on the terrible user data. Noah Weiss, vice president of product management at Foursquare, said: "We examined the session analysis and found that only one out of 20 conversations involved social and discovery functions." This means that just the 5% of Foursquare users looking for a friend while looking for a hotel. "So, why not separate them? Because 19 of 20 times, you click on an icon to meet your needs."

"The more we think, the more we have things to do on either side, but we can not do that together," said Jon Steinback, vice president of product experience at Foursquare. "It looks like We are participating in a two-legged three-legged race, dragging the other leg on each side. " Weiss is more pessimistic: "The tasks we've done before seem a bit unrealistic - insisting on a single-purpose application plus two major functions."

Split logic

Foursquare's decision-making is part of the megatrend in the mobile space - unzipping complex web features into a collection of interoperable applications and no longer trying to build a powerful Mac app. Foursquare This move is more meaningful than the spin-off deployment of Facebook, Google and Twitter because the two parts of Foursquare can help each other.

Steinbeck points out: "I think mobility is going to make this transition happen.We are born and moved, but we are born with the same mindset - every mobile app is like a web page's accessory." With the expansion and advancement of mobile apps , You have been able to get a completely different experience.Now you can open the application to complete only the tasks the application can accomplish, they no longer like the vassal of the page or extension.

Bijan Sabet, an early investor and current director of Foursquare, said: "Imagine the first thing it does when it opens up Youtube is creating a video that scares away many users, just as you do without tweets Happily using Twitter. The application is divided into two, so that users are more clear, sign is no longer the user's choice of action using Foursquare.

During the months of testing, the company found that splitting made the user experience in both parts more focused and effective. Each use of time shorter, but the frequency has been increased. According to Crowley, "By simplifying the process and refining the use of individual applications, we'll make our users find the search and discovery tools here first class."

No more horror than accidental encounter

If you want to see who is in the vicinity at 1 am and then call a friend to have a drink, Swarm could have a show of his own hand, but unexpectedly Facebook rippled. Just two weeks after Foursquare announced a split, Facebook released the "Nearby Friends" feature, which looks like Foursquare for Swarm in both appearance and mode of operation. Crawley said in a post at Tumblr that he would not worry about the future, and he did not worry when Facebook first tapped in 2010 for features. Crawley believes Facebook friends are too complicated to share in such private information.

Similar applications like Highlight, Sonar and Banjo can help users track old friends and make new friends, which is too mainstream. Facebook's Nearby and Foursquare's Swarm all hope to dispel user fears by creating a feeling of intimate circle of friends. Weiss said: "Passive location sharing, the ability to share information the way users want them, they do not really want to publish over-detailed location information and do not want to be found. What users want is just to let them know where they are For example, just come out of Williamsburg, you want to see who are in this neighborhood.

More importantly, you can share your user's directions even without opening the app. So when you walk out of the subway and check your phone, Foursquare knows you're in the new location and updates the status accordingly. Swarm is better than Facebook when it comes to sharing environment locations. Swarm users have this need - to share ambiguous information with specific groups.

Foursquare how to make money?

Swarm has become the protagonist of these days, Foursquare application change will make it quickly transformed. The development team has nicknames for both apps: Foursquare is called "Batman," and Swarm is "Robin." Internal team tacit understanding: "sign in" the attraction may always be concentrated in a small number of users, the local search is the mainstream.

Time to turn to 2012, Foursquare hopes to usher in new financing, high valuations. Later, the first debt-ridden, and subsequently access to investment, the valuation is less than the first few rounds. Naveen Selvadurai, one of the founders, chose to leave because of the shrinking net worth of the company. The core problem is: user growth slowed significantly, lagging behind mobile social networking peers.

However, investors believe that if the renovation will help Foursquare to get more users, will be valuable. For the past two years, Foursquare has inserted ads into apps - "We've learned a lot," says investor and board member Ben Horowitz. "Foursquare is pretty good, making money almost as good as any other social service . "In terms of marketing, Foursquare has an average revenue per user higher than Facebook and Twitter," It's a very powerful fact that will help them stay focused ... they know they do not need a billion users to build a home Great value for the company. "

Steven Rosenblatt, head of revenue at Foursquare, knows the potential for profit. He worked for Apple, the most profitable company, and was involved in the launch of Apple's mobile advertising products. Later Rosenblatt joined Foursquare, because in his eyes, this is the best mobile advertising. "Others used geo-fencing, but about two-thirds of them went wrong," he said. "Foursquare is more accurate and accurate than similar businesses I've seen in the past 16 years , Which is why advertisers are willing to pay. "Insider revealed that Foursquare revenue has increased from 2 million US dollars in 2012 to 12 million US dollars in 2013, and this year revenues will increase to 40 million to 50 million Dollars.

The next few years, the company's best model of development is similar to Yelp, while Foursquare insiders also see the new discovery as a "Yelp killer." Yelp, the flagship user review, has become a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of nearly $ 4.6 billion. Foursquare believes that their own data and technology enough to beat Yelp, but people still do not realize this point - a lot of people are Foursquare original positioning sign, badge, social function scared away.

Crowley said, "Foursquare should know about the blocks I frequented, or when I went to a restaurant that I would not go to." In the sense that Foursquare wanted more than just the best local search, Predictive digital assistants, similar to Microsoft Cortana, Apple's Siri, and Google's Google Now. In the eyes of Crawley, in the future the phone will not tell you what's near - and will tell you what you will like based on where you (and your friends) have been.

"Sign in" the next stop

If Foursquare does not collect check-in information, how does it personalize the user's results? You know, in the past five years, check in become the cornerstone of the Foursquare recommendation engine, almost propped up the company's entire business and data collection engine.

Crowley said Foursquare has not only collected 6 billion signings, but also collected 6 billion records annotated in 60 million locations around the world. Every place looks like a check-in hotspot - people want to label "I'm here." Signing will collect a lot of information, such as GPS signals, cell phone signal tower, Wi-Fi network.

Now, Foursquare already has so much information, without checking in, it can be more accurately guess where you stop there. Prior to this, Foursquare through sign to maintain the timeliness and accuracy of the location database. Foursquare calls these implicit signings "p-check-in" or Neighborhood Sharing. Just take a photo in four or five different Japanese restaurants in six months, and without sign-in, Foursquare learns that you like Japanese food and starts recommending food based on that data.

Crawley explains: "This kind of functionality is a bit like contextual perception - it builds a first impression based on where the device has been and guess what I might like based on where I or my friends have been. "

These subtleties are one of the places where Foursquare is better than the average recommended service. Weiss said: "We do not want users to read long and tedious comments, and we do not have that long comment.We have only countless users tell us - why is this place so famous? What is the special Where do we introduce this place to you in an authoritative way so you can understand it with just one glance?

Crawley and his team developed in this way, but they did not consider themselves to be Yelp's competitors. They see it as something more meaningful - no matter where you are, there is a way to find something interesting around you. This is Crawley's goal for many years, and maybe he's on the right track.

Crawley thinks: "Foursquare is a super power that helps us to get 'clairvoyant' and 'clairvoyant' eyes, with which you can see sights 100 yards, 5 miles, 10 miles away or whatever. Walked into a restaurant and told me what should I order; I walked into a block where it told me what I could turn around and landed in a place I had not been before, which told me there was my friend here and that's what we are Doing something. "