Foursquare and the Place Race

August 20, 2010 Written by History , Social Media

So Facebook Places has been launched… Well at least in the U.S anyway. So what does this mean for Foursquare and other location based services such as Gowalla and Loopt ?

Well it potentially means a lot. Essentially the Facebook giant now does the same thing as these “niche” services. Can they compete? Yes they can but it has made things tricky for sure. How do they compete? Simple really – by being cooler.

How Wicked is Foursquare?

I’m going to go on the record and say I love Foursquare. It’s quick, simple, cool, and potentially leads to tangible rewards for those who check-in to businesses actively using it for promotions. It appeals to my competitive nature (can you be the mayor of the universe?) and there is an element of social cred to be gained from checking into certain places (without blatantly updating your status) “Andy just checked-in @ the Playboy Mansion” – no biggy.

What do I like most about Foursquare though? They show business the love. Big time. The  screen-shot below is straight off their website. I Don’t see Facebook doing that any time soon!

foursquarelove Foursquare and the Place Race

Not convinced? A lot of bloggers share your concerns. Many believe the location based applications are over-hyped and some just simply don’t like them. It seems there is either a love or hate relationship for location.

Back to Places

So you now know iThnk Foursquare is choice; but getting back the the initial question about competing with Facebook, can Foursquare survive? What I see happening with the emergence of Fb Places is more of the “lets just stick to Facebook”  mentality. Sigh. Foursquare is a way to diversify your social media presence and Facebook places now has the potential to kill that happening. So I do see Facebook taking some of the glory but this could actually work to the advantage of the smaller players…As the pie gets bigger, each piece gets bigger with it. So if everyone gets into location, Foursquare will get a good chunk of the love.

There is something far more important that will happen very soon too, in fact maybe it already has… Facebook will become uncool. Facebook is too mainstream for it not to. When it happens whatever they do will become lame, if you’re on there doing it you become lame by association. There’s  my prediction – Facebook will loose its mojo sooner rather than later.

Maybe Foursquare will be cool enough to take over, maybe something else will pop up; but just because Facebook has entered the place race, it isn’t game over. Far from it. What do you think?

  • http://hugokant.com Hugo Kant

    Yes, interesting to see how this will evolve.

    Problem is that foursquare didn’t hit the mainstream soon enough i think. I love foursquare and wanted to use it but none of my real life friends are using it nor they have an account. And on the other hand nearly ALL of my real life friends are on facebook and are already using it much more than me.

    Granted foursquare is not only to connect with people you know but when you are just starting, being “the only one” on here is not really engaging.

  • http://twitter.com/MooreofAndy Andy Moore

    Hey Hugo, I agree that Foursquare hasn’t cut-through into social media mainstream anywhere near as much as it could’ve – especially outside the States.

    Somewhat ironically I believe Facebook is crucial to Foursquare becoming more popular… Posting your Foursquare updates to your Facebook profile will get the service noticed. The more of your friends that see you’re into it, the more will pick it up give it a go too.

    I think it’s cool, you think it’s cool – it just takes cool people like us to be the innovators and help speed up the adoption process. Businesses have the big part to play with Foursquare though, if the deals are good the people will certainly follow. Hopefully then the interaction we all want will come.

    Thanks for taking the time to comment.