Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by rsobers | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

rsobers·

The immediate result: a diminished user experience. Strategy tax in full effect.

View on HN

Don't worry. Facebook will never do something like this to the Oculus Rift.

Love this quote!

But seriously, who didn't think this was going to happen?

I hold out hope every time someone claims such BS, I like trying to be optimistic.

I don't really -expect- them to follow through tho. :/

No wonder I was not able to find newly opened restaurants and some local spots which were available before the auto-update.

Facebook doesn't seem to measure for quality, they just seem to measure for quantity..

FWIW, Foursquare data in Europe is not very good, I think FB geo data is better. I've mentioned this before on HN, Foursquare in Europe is quite unreliable, with places appearing way off the real location, badly categorised (e.g. a restaurant categorised as a bar), etc. I guess quality on these services depends where you are.

I am curious how this can be possible?

Does FB and Foursquare utilise broadly similar geo-location technology from within the mobile device?

Not saying you are incorrect - just wondering if a technical expert could elaborate on the accuracy.

They buy different starting data sets.

I guess most services also use things like the free GNIS data set from the U.S. government (it has good coverage, but the geocoding is not amazing).

Edit: And an entity like GNIS actually has less resources than Foursquare gets with its army of users (or at least, a lot less feedback generation).

Probably more of a human thing than technical. The accuracy benefits from crowd-sourcing and Foursquare is used relatively significantly more in the US.

Only in the US. And Places will get better faster. Not a bad strategy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com