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Foursquare History

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Submitted By blackbird2011
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The race for SMS location sharing started long before Foursquare. Before Foursquare there was Dodgeball the brainchild of Dennis Crowley and partner Alex Rainert. Rainert and Crowley worked together on the predecessor of Foursquare before selling to Google in 2005. After selling to Google the Dodgeball founders worked for the technology monolith until 2007. (Burns, 2010.)
Cromley cited the departure from Google to be lack of support as he detailed on his Flickr picture (shown right) “It's no real secret that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn't convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk away from dodgeball, I'm actually looking forward to getting to work on other projects again. “(Crowley, 2007).
After Dodgeball came Foursquare, the forerunner in SMS location sharing. Foursquare was born in coffee shops and bars in the silicon alley in New York City. Dennis Crowley, former founder of Dodgeball, and Naveen Selvadurai founded the start-up after meeting in 2007. Alex Rainert, of Dodgeball fame, was a seed investor and is now on staff with Foursquare. (Burns, 2010).
Foursquare was launched at the South by Southwest festival in 2007 and quickly became the tech world’s new darling. As with any new technology competition was soon to follow. The largest early threat to Foursquare was Facebook Places. Places integrated with the popular social sharing site and offered the same SMS location sharing as Foursquare. Due to privacy issues Facebook announced in August 2011 that they would discontinue Facebook Places. (Popper, 2011).
As mobile location sharing heats up the question is raised whether Google is anxious to reenter the game and if they would be a major player if they have invested more in Dodgeball. Dodgeball was axed from the lineup of Google services and the company’s interest in SMS location sharing is still unclear. Although there is speculation that Google is eyeing smaller SMS location sharing companies.
Foursquare has grown incredibly quickly since launching in 2007. They currently have 10 million users worldwide and 3 million check-ins daily. The growth of this platform is expected to continue as more customers switch to smart phones. Foursquare is also the first technology widely used that allows for social location sharing. The application hasn’t replaced any other products on the market but has carved out a new category in the marketplace.
The rapid growth has led FourSquare executives to develop many product enhancements to make it beneficial to both customers and business users. This will allow the company to monetize this social sharing platform. Foursquare offers both Brand Building solutions and Direct Lead Generation. For businesses the company offers two major categories of Service: Venues and Brand marketing.
Venue marketing is designed to allow venues and brick and mortar establishments the opportunity to offer customers specials. These specials must be unlocked based on some sort of customer activity. An example would be customers would be offered a discount on food and beverage if they bring a total of 4 or 5 guests within a designated time period. This will give venues an opportunity to fill in their slow time. The beauty of specials is they will show up on a device merely if you are in proximity of the establishment. This has been designed to bring mobile users in. Types of specials include: friends specials, swarm specials, newbie special, and loyalty specials.
FourSquare for Brands in meant to strengthen Brands that do not have a physical location attributed to them. This may include products, magazines, and television stations. Brands can set up pages within Foursquare and users can sign up for those pages to see ‘tips’. One successful campaign was launched by the History channel. To help launch their documentary America: the Story of Us – the history channel added tips for historical locations all over the US. So if users signed up for the History Channel page they would see historical anecdotes as they traveled through their history. (O’Dell, 2010).
Foursquare is a young application and is poised for continued growth and invention. Currently, the company has announced several new beta-opportunities and product roll-outs. In the near future brands and venues will be able to set up tours and list their favorite locations within a city. SMS Location Sharing is poised for future growth and new invention.

References

Matt Burns (2010, August 5). Tech Crunch. Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/05/eric-schmidt-google-dodgeball-foursquare/ Dennis Crowley (2007, April 12). Flickr. Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/460987802/ Ben Popper (2011, August 23). BetaBeat. Retrieved from http://www.betabeat.com/2011/08/23/facebook-just-bowed-out-of-the-check-in-war-with-foursquare/

Jolie O’Dell (2010, April 13). Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/04/13/history-channel-foursquare/

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