Yahoo in Talks to Buy Foursquare | Hacker News Reader

Yahoo in Talks to Buy Foursquare

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199 pointstheyeti83 comments

People forget that Mayer acquired 56 companies (57 if Foursquare deal goes through). That is, 41% of all of Yahoo's acquisitions over the past 20 years happened in the last 3 years. Think it is important to analyze this Foursquare deal the context of this yet-to-be-proven strategy.

Back to this deal: Interesting possibility, for sure. Will it work out? Who knows with Yahoo.

Foursquare assets:

     1) Brand name with both consumers and businesses

     2) 45m daily active users

     3) Valuable data- Can improve Yahoo Search, Yahoo ads, etc

     4) Large group of domain experts

Yahoo's value add:

     1) Yahoo does have a strong ad sales department, so it can bring lots of brand names to Foursquare

     2) Can heavily integrate Foursquare into its search features- so Foursquare's DAU can stabilize/grow.

Seems like Mayer's strategy is:

1) Buy her way out of changing Yahoo's employees + culture. This is a longer term play.

2) Try to create some constellation of a platform. Ideal world for Mayer would be:

     a) Get your homepage to be Yahoo

     b) Read the latest trending headlines via Yahoo media 

     c) Yahoo stories pump up Yahoo-owned Tumblr blogs, Yahoo-owned Flickr photo sharing, etc

     d) After that, you search for things on Yahoo. The search would ideally share information coming from Foursquare.

The big thing is on execution and that's why people constantly criticize Yahoo. If they do actually make a sensible platform, expect Mayer to be viewed very positively.

"2) 45m daily active users"

Source? Maybe user signups, but I can't imagine daily active users.

Looks like it's registered users, as of a year ago.[0]

[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/foursquare-surpasses-45-milli...

This has got to be entirely for their location data. While I see the migration of check-ins to swarm as Foursquares way to say individual check-in data is largely useless, their data on latitude and longitude of businesses as well as their somewhat lengthy knowledge about the venues from user reviews is very valuable. Foursquare is also probably cheaper than buying Yelp, or Google Places which are the only other ways to get this sort of in-depth information. Untappd is exclusively Foursquare so you also get a link to all that information. I see Foursquares migration away from check-ins and more of a location API as their way of saying "there are so many niche markets that do check-ins why not just focus on what we do so well which is providing location / review data"

http://factual.com/ is the big player in place that no one has heard of.

I still think a lot of the urgency behind Google+ was from Facebook throwing up a landing page for every business they could get data for. The conversations between local businesses and customers are valuable conversations to host.

If so, it's an odd way to go about it.

There's a huge number of location data aggregators out there, including Acxiom, Infogroup, Localeze, Factual, and dozens of smaller startups trying to get into the space.

They each sell their data for what I think are incredibly expensive amounts, but still far less than the cost to acquire 4sq.

They all have various amounts of trust and vetting of location data - that said, Foursquare is among the lowest in terms of trust. They've been trying to crack down hard on it for the last few years, but are still way behind the curve.

> While I see the migration of check-ins to swarm as Foursquares way to say individual check-in data is largely useless, their data on latitude and longitude of businesses as well as their somewhat lengthy knowledge about the venues from user reviews is very valuable

The problem is that without ongoing individual check-ins the aggregate data becomes stale and useless, especially when you're talking about the kind of small businesses that are going to make up the long tail of any monetization strategy. There's no way Yahoo! would do this as a pure data play unless they have a plan to revive the individual check-ins.

I wonder if they are letting the smaller apps (like Untappd) be their check-in frontend and they basically just aggregate up all the locations the people have "checked-in". With Untappd, to create a new location, you have to download Foursquare and create it so it keeps users creating new venues and you immediately have a somewhat genre.

When your company is on its way down and may never make money again, Yahoo will be there.

Foursquare has build a solid data business, also its data team is one of the best out there. Go on youtube and watch some of their presentations to see what is possible with their data. The issue is that they are stuck in a strategy and a founders vision, this makes it hard to totally change their business, branding etc. I still think apple should have bought them a long time ago, but it is a solid buy for Yahoo, not the foursquare part but the data side, which is worth more.

Wouldn't solid data business require they made money? I am not sure it's so solid as we might think.

I don't understand why they pivoted to a Yelp model instead of just trying to grow check-ins and market their data to businesses. For at least the US market I imagine Foursquare is the best dataset out there.

https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/588354385249435649

edit: cnbc saying they are not in talks for the twitter blocked individuals here

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102588909?trknav=homestack:topnews:7

additional info

What is Yahoo's acquisition strategy? Looking at the list of acquisitions since Marissa Mayer's arrival [0], the theme seems to be pageviews + content + userbase + advertising. This is the strategy of a media company. Attract as many eyeballs as possible, then monetize them.

How does Foursquare fit into this? Perhaps the plan is to turn it into an advertising platform for businesses, and differentiate from Yelp through feaures like better review transparency?

Advantages I see of Foursquare:

- Recognizable brand, offline and online, despite declining userbase.

- Lots of brick-and-mortar businesses already signed onto platform.

- Businesses pay money to advertise. Yahoo can monetize offline channel and reach customers in-store.

- Businesses frustrated with Yelp, now is opportunity to differentiate.

This acuisition could fit into the "media company" strategy because it enables monetization of businesses and opens up offline communication channels for reaching customers.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...

Foursquare's newest location-based advertising platform seems a likely reason according to your themes.

http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/04/14/foursquare-launches-new-...

For a very long time Yahoo considered itself first and foremost an entertainment/media company. It considered "online" as its channel.

It's not a bad strategy given that Yahoo isn't particularly technically exceptional.

I miss the Yahoo! of

Delicious, Flickr and Pipes when those products were first brought to Yahoo! and than killed by lack of investment.

How do you definite technically exceptional? Trendy javascript frameworks?

http://labs.yahoo.com/

Some people just talk out of their asses, Yahoo has been for a long time a big player when it comes to be technically exceptional.

They were doing all the big data stuff we see as "cool" way before it was cool.

Times change!

Hey, they use trendy JS frameworks too!

http://discuss.emberjs.com/t/big-things-are-happening-here-a...

http://yahooeng.tumblr.com/post/101682875656/evolving-yahoo-...

I used to know some people in Yahoo's LA office, and they described it as an intensely dysfunctional environment where it's almost impossible to get things done -- roughly the same thing I heard about Zynga, but not as bad as Myspace (before it imploded).

Most of the time that kind of complaint is the dog blaming the student for leaving the homework in the kitchen, but I heard these stories from some of the most talented engineers I know.

MaVeNS. Mobile-Video-Native-Social.

Yahoo's goal is turn that into a billion business to offset the declining traditional display ads business by the old media Yahoo.

Foursquare fits three of those four, in that imagine soon intermixed in between all the swarming chatter of the best places to eat, drink, and dance submitted by user will be sponsored ads made to look like regular user discussions, extolling you to try out this other place to eat, drink, dance.

In the future servers are paid for by shilling.

> In the future servers are paid for by shilling.

What? This sounds interesting but I don't understand what you mean. Could you elaborate?

native ads

The next version of the yellow pages.

I'm going to post it here because the other post complaining about FourSquare's check-in function (Swarm) dying is saturated.

I'm a big check-in user but FourSquare's pivot has been brilliant. You can clearly see the benefits when they partnered with Twitter, with FourSquare being the 'Google of the physical world'.

Having a dedicated app for checking in (meaning the people who like to check-in are properly looked after in their own, siloed app) is a lot nicer than before.

Back to Yahoo!: Don't think this will be a good acquisition. Look at their previous acquisitions: Tumblr. Nothing much has happened, no major monetisation project.

Twitter would be a better company to buy. It also makes logistical sense as well. Combination of Twitter and FourSquare would be an effective combination against Facebook, and also Google Plus and Google Maps.

Twitter said no to Yahoo already.

Pump the brakes a bit here, a lot of folks I trust saying no such acquisition talks are taking place.

http://recode.net/2015/04/15/sources-say-yahoo-foursquare-ar...

Ugh... I hate that I enjoy this type of gossip so much. It's the reality TV of my demographic.

Do people still use foursquare or is this about something else? I don't know anyone who still uses it. At work, I once remember a time when people were competing for most check-ins at the coffee place across the street, or even our building itself.

Now, nobody ever mentions it.

I agree and I think it's reflected in the $900 million price tag, which is lower than what I would've guessed.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/foursquare/funding-r...

Considering the $160 million + funding, it's not a bad payout, but I have a feeling it could've fetched more 18 months ago.

Used to use it, but the last redesign just made it unusable imo. I switched to Yelp when that came out after previously being a Foursquare user for 5+ years...

agreed - foursquare was great, then they split apps, now it is completely useless. maybe they were ahead of their time ...

Looks like Yahoo! is where startups go to rest in peace!

The new AOL.

Another solid purchase by the company that bought broadcast.com in April 1999 for... drumroll... $5.7 billion! Yes, I'm actually not making that up. It's why you know who Mark Cuban is.

Seems their list of troubled acquisitions was not long enough ...

If Mrs. Mayer has strategy - she better execute it fast. If she has not - at least deal with tumblr before wasting money on another company.

I think she has a pretty clear strategy, as I mentioned in another comment in this thread. Look at the list of acquisitions since she joined as CEO. [0]

Almost all of these acquistions fit into one of three categories: content, advertising, mobile. The strategy is to build Yahoo into a media company.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...

A lot of people here don't realize Foursquare is something entirely different now. When it comes to traveling to a new place Foursquare definitely beats Yelp in recommendations.

For check-ins and that sort of gamification there is Swarm.

Used to be one of my favorite apps - used it a few times a day. Until great bate-and-switch! :)

http://locationplay.blogspot.com/2014/08/so-long-and-thanks-...

Related, but unrelated: Many people who perform a search using the default on their browser do not know whether they are on Google, Yahoo, Bing. They just Googled it, Google may as well be a verb to them as in "I googled it on Yahoo. The first link was from Foursquare."

How does this kind of thing leak? When the last company I was at sold, most of us weren't even told for fear our acquirer would get cold feet if the terms leaked.

It's part of the M&A playbook. One way to test whether a company is for sale or willing to buy you is to "leak" that you're currently in talks with your target acquisition or acquirer.

You get a response sooner or later, either in the form of a firm denial by the other party through the press, or in the form of someone picking up their phone (either from the target itself or from a potentially interested alternative).

So a company that no one cares about is purchasing another company that no one cares about?

But apparently they care enough to point out that no one cares about them....

At least Foursquare is mobile-native, which is one of the primary goals of Yahoo. One of the primary things Foursquare desperately needs is scale, which is one thing Yahoo can legitimately claim to have. For Foursquare it's a bit like admitting defeat, but being eaten by Yahoo could be a good move for users. I've been a foursquare fan since 2011 and would love if the service could regain some of its former luster and glory!

Foursquare also makes a good tie-in with Flickr and their WOEID[1] stuff.

[1] https://developer.yahoo.com/geo/geoplanet/guide/concepts.htm...

The Yahoo Geo team that gave birth to WOEID is no longer. But if you were looking for a geo acquihire, Foursquare would be a pretty amazing one.

Foursquare isn't about checkins anymore, it's about discovery and the TL;DR.

Yelp users love to go on and on and on in their reviews while Foursquare's ratings aren't review-driven though I've found them just as accurate.

I pray that their API stays as developer-friendly as it is now. Google's Places API ToS makes it practically unusable and I can't think of any other obvious alternatives.

Yahoo is indeed the place where startups go to die!

Yes, Foursquare's situation is bad. Still, it has gathered precious and unique data.

One shouldn't underestimate its holistic value.

Exactly, they have gathered precious and unique data but world is changing so fast and if these data are not updated they will be worthless.

Looking at Foursquare's history on CrunchBase, they show "only" $150 Million in funding. That's not even accounting for some of it being debt rather than equity financing.

That makes $900 million a good return, even though I'm sure it's not the peak return FourSquare good have ever gotten.

It is funny to see that the total amount Yahoo gained from all her other acquisitions put together is less than a fraction of the Alibaba deal.

Yahoo is forming a monopoly in the outdated tech company space.

Congrats to the founders they did it again! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodgeball_(service)

I couldn't even remember what foursquare was ...

Yahoo and Foursquare both lack a clear strategy moving forward. I'm not sure adding two struggling companies makes a strong one. Reminds me of Microsoft/Nokia.

that would be another bad acquisition.

People still use Foursquare? My first reaction when seeing this was: "What year is it?!"

Its actually my preferred way to find good restaurants nearby. What do the cool kids use for that nowadays?

Yelp.

And don't blame the cool kids for not using a crappy service.

Citymaps. Yelp has a long way to go before I will trust their rating system, and Yelpers' style of reviews are just painful to read.

Yelp's rating system is....interesting. The "Yelp sort" somehow displays 3-5 stars reviews on top and scatters low ratings in the bottom....

Citymaps looks decent, the data seems to come from 4Square but the UI is better (though a little slow sometimes). I also don't trust Yelp that much.

I use it for this as well, because Yelp reviews have been repeatedly demonstrated to be very unreliable.

I realize this isn't contributing to the conversation, but it's funny to see this directly underneath the post describing the immense dropoff in foursquare's popularity.

Link to that discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9379981

That would be a great way to try and lower the purchase price of a struggling firm. Dump a bunch of negative PR on the company through 3rd parties immediately before making your offer.

Meh, I doubt it would make any impact on the purchase price. I doubt if any serious buyer is under any illusions about how well FourSquare is doing...

Negotiations are based on facts, not perception. M&A revolves around balance sheets, usage statistics, product strategy, and other metrics based on real data. The press is clueless and articles are worthless in the long-term.

Not so much. Any negotiation is heavily influenced by perception and emotion. What you're describing is more true of a pure financial acquisition, but way less true of a strategic acquisition. Fear of missing out, which not generally based on facts, can drive acquirers into a frenzy and drive a valuation halfway to the moon.

Good point and nice distinction between financial vs. strategic acquisitions. But keep in mind there are two sides to the table. If a potential acquirer unleashes a frenzy of negative press leading into an acquisition, it could be obvious to the company being acquired, which could negate any points based on the negative press.

Or, if it is a social network, acctually hurt the value of the company to be acquired. It's certainly a good thing for a social network to have the status of "the place to be" and not "the sinking ship".

Not entirely. Negotiations are begun and concluded with data, but people negotiate on how to interpret the data. As Lord Byron said there are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

Also- if you can influence more passive owners (controlling or otherwise) that the company is doing poorly you can try to gain board support. One of the key principles in negotiation is your best alternative. What if you can change the perception that the best alternative strategy is poor.

You're talking about a company that, within the last year, lost its CTO/first employee, COO, head of bizdev and head of PR, whose top early investors (Union Sq Capital and Andreessen Horowitz) sat out the last round, and that the press (including TC) were openly talking about running out of cash in 2013.

My only point being, no need for Yahoo to dump negative PR.

I found that interesting- if you browse the rest of http://www.junkyardsam.com/blog/ there isn't any discussion of the usage figures of other startups, just art.

I'm not accusing him of being some sort of content shill, but it is interesting to think about - HN, Reddit and the like are a major force these days. An article that is negative about Foursquare absolutely could affect value in acquisition talks.

In fact, since this has since been said to be false, there's an even more entertaining possibility - Foursquare is in talks for an acquisition, but not by Yahoo. So they plant this story about Yahoo being interested to bump their valuation, while the unknown acquirer puts out posts downplaying Foursquare usage...

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