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Comment by jorgeortiz85 | Hacker News Reader

We report 10 million _registered_ users. We've never reported (or made any claims about) active users.

Most tech companies report registered users; Facebook being the notable exception. When Twitter says they have 200M users or Skype says they have 650M users, they're reporting registered, not active, users. That Foursquare only reports registered users is in line with what most of the rest of the industry does.

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Why do you think all those companies report registered users instead of active? Because it's always likely to be much larger and to fool those who don't know any better. Many times the image you project, is in stark contrast with reality. Eg: Skype has 650M registered but when I log in at any given time, there are around 20M users.

because the definition of registered is precise, the definition of active is fuzzy.

sure it makes the company look better, but its also nice to avoid the arguments over "what is an active user"

The definition of active is absolutely not fuzzy. Standard metrics include 1, 7 and 30 day actives, i.e. the number of people who have logged in at least once in the last N days. Tracking those three over time gives you some good statistics.

But don't you think that's kind of shitty?

"in line with what most of the rest of the industry does" doesn't make it any better of a metric.

FWIW I actually agree with you on this point. It's a bit of a prisoners dilema problem though. Basically everyone at this point has "defected" (reported signups). To be the only company to "cooperate (report active users) would be bad PR in a world in which most people don't pay attention to (or in many cases even understand) the difference.

It sucks a little, but I'm not sure what to do about it.

-harryh, engineering lead @ foursquare

presumably your new investors understand the difference and are happy with the real numbers. so it's a great chance to invent the future (as you said above): do it the right way, and have other folks copy you.

All you want to do is showcase your company's growth in the best possible way without being misleading. They're not being misleading or shitty. If you're a free service that doesn't require a signup and makes money off advertising, then reporting registered users doesn't make sense. Advertisers just want to know eyeballs, so Google Analytics Visitor numbers will do. For Foursquare reporting registered users doesn't really make much sense either. They could have easily reported mobile installs too, but that would be similar. Internally, I'd be checking other growth metrics such as "How many people are using Explore", or "How many people are referring friends", or "How many businesses are getting new leads as a result of Foursquare". These are much more important questions, but alas, getting the media to care about that is hopeless.

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