2011: The Year the Check-in Died | Hacker News Reader

2011: The Year the Check-in Died

readwriteweb.com

124 pointsmjfern59 comments

So two points here:

1) Usage on foursquare is up 40% since the beginning of the year.

2) We've always seen the checkin as just the beginning of what we want to accomplish. With the launch of explore and specials 2.0 we've started to get more of our vision out into the world. You can expect more of this sort of thing from us over the course of 2011.

-harryh, engineering lead @ foursquare.

ps: Want to be a part of it? We're hiring! https://foursquare.com/jobs/

I'd be much more excited about Foursquare as a place to work if they did not require a CS degree. It tells me a lot about the culture at 4sq, and what it is telling me is not good. Just a thought.

How hard and fast is that "requirement", though? (I don't know if you do or don't have a CS degree, for the sake of argument let's assume you don't.) I mean, did you try to get an interview there and you were flatly declined because of lack of degree, or is the cs degree requirement just boilerplate? If they're steadfast on no degree = no job, well then, yeah, I'd agree with you, it sounds like not a great place. I think a whole lot of places with the CS degree requirement (or really any of the "requirements" that are typically listed) are just using them as a way to filter out unfit candidates so they don't waste their time.

If you think you're qualified for a position even if you don't meet the requirements of said position, the onus is on you to prove it.

However, if you pointed out reasons a, b, and c that you are qualified, and were still declined (at least for an interview) purely because of lack of CS degree then yeah, they're stupid. I'm wondering if you just took a look at the jobs page, saw the CS degree requirement, at let some "bad place to work!" alarm bell ring without any further investigation.

It's not a hard and fast requirement. We've hired exceptional candidates in the past that don't have CS degrees (or a college degree at all). We do expect candidates to have a strong gasp of computer science fundamentals (data structures and algorithms).

Usage being total checkins per month?

I'd be more interested in a comparison of engagement (checkins per account per month) over time. The first metric can hide declining engagement if there are sufficiently many latecomers who haven't burnt out yet.

checkins per account per month is also up

Last year I was checking-in like mad, this year I completely stopped. Why? Because I changed job and the new people I hang out with don't use 4sq. It's a very different crowd that if I pull out my phone and start checking-in it would be seen as a very strange and embarrassing behaviour.

So I guess your challenge is to make check-in's as natural and encouraging as giving way to the ladies at busy restaurants.

This happened to me the other night. I checked into a bar and was asked by someone I was with why I did it. Seconds later, I received a text from a friend saying she was in the area and wanted to meet up. I said to the person who asked, "That's why."

Now, "just get over it and stop worrying about what other people think" definitely solves my personal problem of how not to be embarrassed, but it doesn't solve Foursquare's problem of convincing users to "just get over it" and "you shouldn't care what other people think". You are definitely right about that challenge. Just thought I'd share an anecdote :)

It's always good to see other side of the coin. Thanks for the clarifications.

I have always felt checkins can be used for various interesting services. viz a user checks-in a pub and he is suggested nearby pubs and offers, a tourist following a series of check-ins suggested by foursquare for exploring a place etc etc.

Badges are cool and all but people sticking just to earn badges is going to be temporary. Badges in Cityville, Farmville etc work well because they ride on top of gameplay and facebook - not much incentives in foursquare.

explore = chasing yelp

specials 2.0 = chasing groupon

Foursquare's vision appears to be looking backward. Dennis Crowley's been thinking about this space for 10 years?

I don't necessarily agree, but Microsoft's vision is also "looking backwards". They saw game consoles, made their own, and now it makes them money.

It's great to predict the future by inventing it, but there's plenty of money to be made in improving existing technology.

None of which are good reasons for not doing them. The best money makers (or most reliable, at least) are things that other people are already making money doing, if you can find a way do them just a little better.

Those are the natural extensions to the product. What would you rather do? ultra-checkin, super-checkin and more badges. "Cool quotient" is good enough to begin you with; but you need to get some real value out of it as well.

What real value can a checkin service potentially provide? (Serious question) I think there are a few things: deals from local businesses, meeting new people, interaction coordination.

Deals are booming now. Groupon and LS are huge and do manage to provide me with value. I think Groupon's upcoming mobile offering is brilliant. The likes of foursquare can use this model successfully as well.

Meeting new people is always a tough one, but it is what people want. Give someine a way to make new friends through your service in real life in a safe way and you'll strike gold.

Interaction coordination is probably the most interesting thing I can think of. Imagine communities organizing events by using foursquare. You get invites. You check in. You pay for the event from your phone. You monitor long distance races by the participants' checkins. You participate in live events virtually by having your name flash on a giant screen. At a town fair you are randomly assigned a person and if you find them within a time limit and check in together you get a prize. A giant game of assasin based on checkins.

The checkin itself is just a tool. Playing with a hammer is fun at first but unless you have something to nail it will get boring.

Couldn't agree with your last sentence more. The same thing is true on the builder side of the table. Now that we've built a pretty decent hammer it's time to decide what else we can create with this nifty tool.

Good metaphor!

Thats exactly what I meant to say.

Too bad the sarcasm in the first sentence is lost on you.

No need to be brash. I understood your sarcasm. Just continued the thought further.

My bad then. Since you were trying to make the same point as I was, I was under the impression you got it wrong.

To be fair, most replies in HN are arguments than "thought continuation"

You shoulda flipped it when you could.

Foursquare is something that became wildly popular at the same time smart phones were becoming more and more ubiquitous. It is a cool sort of "Hey check out what my new phone can do" kind of tool.

As smart phones are becoming more the standard and less the shiny-new-thing, though, Foursquare and the like are turning out to not actually provide that much value, and are losing their stickiness.

Personally, I think that 4sq should have taken up the acquisition offer that it supposedly had.

No matter how much they try and innovate and launch new features, the premise of 'checking in' is forcing a user behavior - and sooner or later, checkin fatigue is going to set in. Just like most other shiny things, the shimmer wears off real quick.

I agree. Not to mention that for many places the whole check-in bit a moderate hassle.

EG: Panera Bread.

Go in to get a coffe and a bagel in the morning. Take out phone, launch app. Oops, can't connect. Panera has free wifi, but I have to open the browser on my phone and check a little box and hit submit. Go back to the app, let it figure out where I am. No, I'm not at Baby Gap (next store over) at 7AM, I'm at Panera. Finally check in. And then... nothing... kind of anti-climatic really.

Meanwhile, I'm juggling credit cards and rewards cards and a drink and a bagel with the cashier.

If I'm lucky, I might get to be Mayor and get $1 off or something, which equates to earning about 2 cents for every checkin.

I played with 4sq and some of the other location services for a while, but just never got any value out of it proportionate to what I put into it time-wise.

While the article raises some valid points, I question the use of compete.com figures to make any claims about foursquare's declining traffic.

Compete.com measures something, and whatever that something is, it's declining.

Latest stackoverflow blog post also shows that site declining on compete.com, despite all other analytics showing it growing.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-exchange-traffic...

I've never gotten reliable results from compete, whenever I look at the results for a website for which I know the real statistics they are always completely wrong...

For example, one of the website I manage has 10 times more unique visitors than compete reports. Another website has been growing in the past few months but is shown as declining in the past few months on compete.. So I don't know what they are measuring but as far as I'm concerned it's about as efficient as using a random number generator to determine the number of page views of a website..

Especially considering that the bulk of their traffic is almost certainly to an API that Compete doesn't track.

And installs are via app stores. Complete is almost completely irrelevant here.

Location based checkin sites are basically games. The problem is that, like all games, people eventually get tired of them and move on to something else.

Tell that to Zynga and Blizzard. Social games (which Foursquare would fall under) have a very long-lasting grip on people.

Foursquare reminds me of this fake RPG called Progress Quest[1]. It's like SETI@Home, but for RPGs. In other words you do nothing while it automatically advances progress bars on the screen and your character advances and there is nothing else to it. Ironically, a lot of people actually wind up running it for quite some time, myself included, but then the joke ends and they stop. To me, it seems inevitable the same will come of Foursquare.

[1] http://progressquest.com/

Declaring a whole class of new and growing startups as "dead" is the most hipster thing I can imagine: Checking in? I guess. I haven't checked into a venue since 2010.

There is some interesting thoughts in here but they're so mixed in with flawed analysis that I don't think I actually learned anything from reading it.

True, except for the fact that Foursquare rode to prominence on the backs of hipsters, roaming Brooklyn and SXSW in droves with their smartphones. So, one might argue that if hipsters have moved on, then that's a leading indicator.

When I first started using foursquare it was neat but I didn't get the appeal. Then I grabbed my first mayorship and for a few months, I checked in religiously. Recently, checking in to places has become a chore. I still do check in when I remember to, but it's not a priority any more.

No-one has ever explained to me why I would want to be the 'mayor' of anything.

I don't even see in what sense it's a game. What. I have to go to Starbucks more than some other person to win?

I thought I was missing some important aspect like I did before I 'got' Twitter but in this case apparently not.

Checking-in is tedious. Most of the benefits of location-based services are happening through better uses of wireless communication. Excluding GPS, Shopkick uses high frequency audio signatures and ZuluTime just patented some new wifi based stuff (http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/11/zulutime-issued-patent-for-...).

I was quite enthusiastic about check-ins when the good old Plazes service was launched back in 2004. One of the great things about that service was that originally check-ins were based on the WiFi access point you were connected to. This made them effectively automatic.

Unfortunately they had a very problematic rewrite from PHP to Rails that lost them quite a bit of their user base, and later Nokia bought the company.

Here are some notes from the one and only PlazeCamp they held just before the acquisition:

http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/plazecamp/ http://fourstarters.com/2008/01/17/plazecamp-wrapup/

The key points with Plazes were: automatic check-ins (it only asked you for information when nobody had connected to that network before), nice statistics (how much you travel per day, who spends time in the same place as you), and also some fun stuff like racing to see who registers most new plazes.

The author gives four reasons for why people check in. He didn't mention the reason I would like to use a checking-in service (I'm not sure if there is a popular one like this yet). I'd like to check in at a bar or a club (I often go alone) and have the service match me with another checked-in person (or people) to hang out with. Instead of using the service to hang out with people I already know, I'd like a service to help me meet new people.

Seems like a check-in service could be a nice way to lower the barrier of introducing oneself to a stranger. It's so easy to talk to strangers online, it would be nice to bring that to the meat world.

I think the author's point is that this sort of usage is only actually feasible with a very narrow demographic, in one or two places in the country -- maybe New York, Boston and San Francisco. Elsewhere, the chance that there would be even two people in a given bar or club running that app and looking for new friends at the same time is basically zero point zero.

Besides that, in the introductions world, "meeting new friends" is marketing-speak for meeting people to date, or more precisely, to hook up with. And, I can imagine, as the author does, that women would be pretty squeamish about getting involved with a service that announces their presence in a particular bar and invites people to meet them.

In any case, Loopt has this service, or at any rate did at one point -- in one of their iterations, they cordoned it off into its own application (Loopt Mix). I turned it on briefly once, to see what it would do, and to be honest, it was pretty creepy, a lot like the parts of Craigslist that have been shut down ...

Yes, those would be the two big challenges:

* It needs to be widespread to work well.

* No creepy factor.

Honest advice: learn to meet people organically. It's really not that hard (granted, you've probably heard all this before and think that for YOU it is that hard).

OK, so please bear with me for a second. What the heck are these check-ins about? foursquare? Huh, I can't make any sense of their horrid front page, what is this about? Where is the explanation (no, not a video, thank you I can read)? Allow me to play the grumpy ol' man here, but this look like another useless toy for teens. And yes, I include facebook and twitter in this category, too.

You're judging a book by its cover. Why not try them out before you criticise?

Also, today's teens are tomorrow's free-spending twenty-somethings, so their preferences can be quite relevant for many businesses.

> You're judging a book by its cover.

I'm judging a website by its front page, godammit. What else could I do? I clicked a bit around, but my PC slowed to a crawl, so much for a first good impression.

> Why not try them out before you criticise?

I could try it out if I could make any sense of it. I don't have time to open accounts on random websites just in case it may be interesting. I'm tech-savvy enough, but if I can't understand what a website is about at first glance, either 1° it's definitely targeting an audience I'm no part of; or 2° there's a serious presentation problem.

So I'm not criticizing, I'm leaning towards the gentler side : I'm probably not their target. Or else, in case they're actually targeting 40yo geeks and entrepreneurs, they may be doing it wrong.

I also thought Foursquare was a fad. Who cares if you checked in there? Who cares if you're the mayor?

I actually have one LBS idea that for me would be really useful, I'd love to have it, and thinking about building it. However I'm slammed with other stuff right now and I'm loathe to switch to Yet Another Shiny Thing rather than build up an existing project further.

(Credentials: I wrote the original Postabon/Signpost iPhone app (a deals LBS startup now backed by Google Ventures), and the iPhone app for a different and more recent AR/ecommerce LBS startup that's currently in stealth.)

I agree with the article's predictions with respect to foursquare, but I'm not sure about Facebook, there's still tremendous potential there. Facebook appears to have released Places without putting much thought into it beyond allowing people to simply check in wherever they are and share it with their friends. But I wouldn't be surprised if they were working on incorporating deals with local businesses, etc on a much larger scale, some time soon, either on their own or in conjunction with Groupon or Living Social.

facebook was actually pretty quick to launch deals:

http://www.facebook.com/deals

- Look at compete.com traffic estimates

- Extrapolate

- Make assumptions based on extrapolation

- Write sensationalist headline

Missed one reason to check in: to promote the location (being a fan). That alone probably isn't enough to sustain a checkin service, though.

The article made me wonder: are any of these accurate enough to be used for "where did I park"? I would love it if my smart phone had a way to eliminate "standing around in a parking lot looking bemused" from my day. I would love it so much that I would permit it to have a "social" component.

Why can't you just add a star in Google maps or something? it should be accurate to two meters... I bet there are tens of apps that do it.

there are apps for it, but i've found launching any app as I leave the car and head in to a shop to be too much trouble. By the time I get the app loaded and ready to record, I'm many meters from the car's location.

It'd be better if the device had a feature to just replay your GPS locations for the last 60 minutes.

And I thought this was about some new source control system that didn't need checkins.

Yes, yes, sure, in the greater sense of things everything is dead or dying. However, I think it's a bit silly to write off a phenomenon, market, or product while it's still in the explosive growth stage. I personally don't like foursquare but it seems to be going even strong as ever, which is all the more impressive after having weathered some rather strong competition (such as facebook).

The check-in is way too egalitarian in order to transfer any perceived social wealth through using the service.

What value can it have when I spend $300 on tickets to an event and some schmuck in the nosebleed seats who spent $30 can check-in with the same social weight? He's not in my class and I don't want him to be associated with me, never mind competing with me in a game.

It's all fun and games until the normals start playing.

Lacking context. What's a "check-in"?

correction: foursquare is up to 7 million users, I spoke to dennis a week or two ago. pretty impressive by comparison, I think Facebook had 6 million at their year 2 mark.

Woah there, wait just one minute. Facebook had 5.5 million active users after two years [1]. Foursquare has 7 million registered accounts [2]. I shouldn't have to explain how different those two metrics are.

[1] http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline (active user defined as having visited in the last 30 days)

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/foursquare-closing-in-on-7-...

ah missed the "active" part ;) I quoted that from memory on my phone--not an apples to apples comparison but makes me wonder. I'm interested in what portion of 4sq's users are 'active', so I'll see if I can do some digging and find out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com