Harmonic Aftershock

What could be next for Foursquare?

An interesting interplay around Foursquare’s development strategy took place on Twitter Saturday evening when @Kris recommended to Dennis Crowley (CEO) and Tristan Walker (Head of Biz Dev) an idea that got the company’s leaders pretty jazzed up.

 

On one hand it’s fascinating to see Foursquare’s strategic decisions play out on the public social web. On the other hand, LBSN competitors like Gowalla could easily be monitoring the conversation in real-time and be first-to-market with any good ideas.

But maybe that’s smart on Foursquare’s behalf since they now have a publically documented account of their idea’s conception which only energizes their core user base and could help mitigate against competitive "copy catting."

What do you think? Should Foursquare keep a tighter lock on its development roadmap or be more open and public with what may be on the horizon?

The Power of “Social Currency”

Last week, I posted the results of Hill Holliday’s poll which sought to answer the question: “Why do we check in?” (on location-based social networks like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, MyTown, etc.).

Overwhelmingly, we confirmed that people are motivated to earn social currency (badges, pins, mayorships, etc.). They like the “competition” of it all and, apparently, the gratification it gives them (us).

 Here are a few of the “free form” responses that I didn’t include in the Hill Holliday post:

• The competition to receive badges and mayorship's has increased my curiosity
• competition with friends, accumulating badges, show people where I've been
• I liked getting badges
• It is fun to do, and makes a game of mundane tasks
• I use Gowalla because I like collecting things
• I'm really just in it to gather all of the items
• Out of boredom, to get badges and rewards
• Its fun to unlock different badges - gives some incentive
• Social Currency - I do it for the badges
• To try and win badges
• Competition!
• It feels good to become Mayor of my favorite places and broadcast that to my friends
• Fun, competion, see where others are
• To compete against friends - to get badges
• At first primarily for points, mayorships deals
• To earn badges (Foursquare)

There are a lot of other interesting data points (and maybe a few surprises) from the poll results including how location-based social network users feel about privacy and brands' involvement. So check out the full report on Hill Holliday’s blog.

[read the full report]