I've always found Foursquare quite useful from a venue discovery PoV, if not the whole "find where your friends are" angle.

I can think of more than a few apps that are more useless.

Try using it as a terse alternative to Yelp, its verbose reviewers, and its shady review collusion.

Foursquare's data is pretty good, and their API limits are pretty fair.

I've been able to make a list of bars in big cities such as NYC and rank them by rating using Foursquare data.

SF: https://www.icloud.com/iw/#numbers/BAJgIU7STmBNBkW_ziOBmn5BY...

NYC: https://www.icloud.com/iw/#numbers/BAKlTrL5ohjtIDpPkrOB3UW9G...

I found Foursquare to have by far the best meta-data (compared to Google maps, Yelp, TripAdvisor) when living abroad in Asia.

Meta observation: 4sq was a grind game, and aside from the addicted, grind games are the most fun ever, until they're not cool at all anymore and everyone always knew it.

So you create an awesome successful grind game. Cool. Next step, either create a new grind game (and hope lightning strikes twice LOL), or find a new line of business to pivot into, or go out of business.

I couldn't agree more, but I also at one point thought "facebook, but ONLY status updates? That's dumb."

These "pay attention to me" type apps all seem to do well.