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Comment by zaidf | Hacker News Reader

To all the people automatically assuming that this is a result of facebook acquiring instagram, what if this actually improves the user experience? What if instagram always wanted to integrate with facebook because they knew it was a better user experience and yet didn't because they knew facebook was instagram's #1 competitor? In that case the acquisition enables a positive.

I, for one, could not give a crap about foursquare and yet use facebook on a daily basis. I understand foursquare has its community of supporters but I don't think any objective person will argue that foursquare is on a solid trajectory. In that case, it'd make sense to go with a more established player.

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The fact is, Foursquare has a truly excellent place database that's well-curated by users and is highly accurate due to the nature of their product.

Facebook does not. It has a mess of duplicate places and incorrect names due to the nature of their product. Hopefully this will be an impetus for improving their location database, but until then I don't see it being a better experience at all.

A contrarian "What if" question is fun and good to ask, but it's not automatically valid.

I can appreciated GP's optimism, but as someone who has actually utilized both data sets in various forms this is spot on.

Foursquare's data is vastly superior, something I attribute at least partially to the fact that they've built a service that incentivizes checking in, while Facebook is more heavily scrutinized for their questionable privacy practices. It'll be interesting to see if this continues to be the case when 4sq releases Swarm.

Facebook acquired Instagram not Foursquare.

woops :)

Obviously the acquisition changes the calculus no matter how independent the players claim the companies will continue to act independently.

However, I think you are quite possibly right. Acting independently does not preclude Instagram from switching to Facebook place information. There are large benefits to using Facebook data over Foursquare not the least of which is better data outside the US. And with Foursquare on perennial death watch and switching directions frequently (including very recently), switching away from it is probably a wise business decision.

"solid trajectory" does not mean great user experience.

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