Connect with the world's leading business experts.
Get instant access to their expertise via world–class Q&A, Research, and Events.
0
Does Facebook Places mean the end of FourSquare or validate them?
At first blush, Facebook Places looks pretty cool and will quickly have more people "checking-in" than had ever even heard of FourSquare up to this point. But will Facebook Places be a FourSquare killer or simply add more velocity to the usage of location based services by mobile users?
Events
- Social Media and Content Marketing For Business Q&A Feb 14 @ 11 am PT
- #TNLive Radio: Workforce Marketing & Recruitment Feb 14 @ 4 pm PT
- The Rise of Pinterest in B2B Feb 15 @ 11 am PT
- ERP – Priming Your Business to Deliver Value From Strategy to Operations Feb 15 @ 1 pm PT
- How Not to Coach Your Salespeople Feb 16 @ 1 pm PT
Related Activity
2 Answers
This looks like a tough one for Foursquare. If you buy into the whole Geoffrey Moore "Crossing the Chasm" concept, then Facebook just made it a *lot* harder for Foursquare to cross the chasm where the user base migrates from early adopters to pragmatists or what Moore would call the early majority. The definition of market power is Facebook - they essentially own and operate their own private internet with 500 million users. That puts Facebook in a unique position to layer application after application on top of their network. In the process
Crowley and team need to come up with some point of differentiation that Facebook will not be able to easily replicate. Interestingly, this might not be a differentiated product feature (looks like FB will be able to easily replicate anything Foursquare does), but rather a business model innovation like scaling a big sales team to get deeply integrated with merchants/retailers/restaurants... and other types of locations. Counter-intuitive, but definitely worth exploring.
I agree...4sq's differentiation opportunity is more on the merchant side - provide exclusive deals that maybe are only available to 4sq users (adoption/usage is rewarded with badges that also provide more exclusive deals) - this requires a huge sales team per scott's comment - hmm...groupon/4sq deal maybe?
Answer This Question