BradGoetsch.com

Foursquare: Are You Checking Out the Hottest Social Media App?

By Natasha Thakkar
Published April 30, 2010

There was an overwhelming number of users checking in using Foursquare at the South by Southwest Conference (SxSW), held in Austin, Texas recently.  The application changed itself up a bit for its second conference appearance, allowing users not only to check in at buildings, but at each event at the conference.

It is mind-boggling to think that the now-famous location-based app launched at the very same conference only a year ago. Geo-location apps like Foursquare and Gowalla took center stage at the event, with Foursquare being the clear winner. 

Foursquare Roots

Foursquare founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai can thank Apple for their recent success with the application. As desktops become a thing of the 1990s, smartphones and GPS devices are becoming a necessity in the age of Web 2.0. The Apple iPhone broke new ground and paved the way for inventive apps like Foursquare to become as popular as they are.

It was all playground games for Crowley from the start. He first developed a mobile web service called Dodgeball. The idea behind Dodgeball was simple: First, you text your current location to Dodgeball. That information would then be sent to other Dodgeball members in the area. The idea was that you could use it to meet up with old friends and make new ones while out and about.

In 2005, Google purchased Dodgeball and later decided to shut it down. Crowley didn’t let that discourage him and instead worked with Selvadurai to create Foursquare, combining new social elements to make the application stand out above the rest.

Foursquare Basics

Foursquare doesn’t just broadcast your location to your selected friends; it also serves as a game, pairing virtual rewards with real activities.

Users earn badges as they visit different spots. Visit one location enough times and you become the mayor. You can use Foursquare to meet new friends, find out who else is in your area or compete against other people in your city.

“Elizabeth Fisher just checked in at the Algonquin Hotel.” This message is now famous as a supposed shout out to Foursquare, which popularized the phrase “check-in” on the deliciously tech-savvy show, “Gossip Girls.”  Even Crowley couldn’t resist and took to Twitter to post, “Check-ins on Gossip Girl?”

As of March 2010, Foursquare has 500,000 users and 1.4 million venues according to Tech Crunch, keeping Gowalla at a solid second place. Why are more people checking out Foursquare, leaving Loopt and Gowalla in the dust? It’s simple.

Foursquare is in full effect in southwest Michigan. I have noticed a bunch of new venues lately.

I saw this chart in Morgan Stanley's latest Internet trends report.

 

Even though I've been saying for years that social networking will one day usurp email, it's a bit shocking to see that it has. 

There are some caveats. My kids use Facebook as their primary inbox (they also use gmail). So some of what they do on Facebook is actually email.

But even so, it looks like email's reign as the king of communication is ending and social networking is now supreme.

When we landed back in the states recently after a long flight and got in a car to drive into the city, The Gotham Gal looked at me and said "why are you checking twitter and not email?" (as she was doing). I told her that email required a reply and twitter did not. And that I preferred twitter to email and always checked it first.

Whether it's Twitter, Facebook, or some other social networking service, I believe the lighter weight communication paradigm (say less, reach more) is superior to email for many things and I'm certainly moving more of my communications away from email.

Ideally, that would leave the more important heavier weight communications in email. If it were only so. Email's biggest problem is the inability to control other's power to email you. That is also its greatest strength.

If email can solve the inbound overload problem, it can become a sustainable compliment to social networking and remain a powerful mode of communication for a long time to come. It's a truly private channel and is more suitable for long-form serious private conversations.

And email's usage is still growing (125bn minutes per month in the chart above). So don't take this post as anti-email. We've got one email related investment that is doing great, Return Path, and we are certainly open to doing more there.

But social networking is the king of communications now. Long live the king.