Discovery, the virtual exploration of physical spaces, is the future of location information. Robert Scoble points out to the founder of Foursquare, Dennis Crowley, how he uses Foursquare not just to declare where he is but to see what is around him. Dennis believes that the power of his location start-ups is to discover or rediscover a city. This is where he thinks Foursquare is at its best.
The lesson of Dodgeball was to make location applications not just personal but social experiences. When you check-in to Foursquare, you are not just telling your friends where you are but are shown tips and offers around you.
Foursquare has now moved out of the start-up scene into competing with Facebook. However, Foursquare remains different from Facebook because of Foursquare's distinct social graph data. Both tackle different aspects of social.
It is only recently that Foursquare has been able to focus on discovery with an increase of a half billion check-ins with 10 million users as of April 2011. This is making Foursquare a unique recommendation engine for "things to do around you."
Dennis Crowley is the Co-Founder of Foursquare, a service that combines social networks, location awareness and game mechanics to encourage people to explore the world around them. Previously, Dennis founded Dodgeball.com, one of the first mobile social services in the US, acquired by Google in 2005. Crowley was named one of the "Top 35 Innovators Under 35" in MIT's Technology Review magazine (2005), one of Fortune's "40 Under 40" (2010) and has won the "Fast Money" bonus round on the TV game show Family Feud (2009). He is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Dennis holds a Master's degree from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program and a bachelor's degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.
Robert Scoble is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He currently works for Rackspace and the Rackspace-sponsored community site Building 43. He previously worked for Fast Company as a video blogger and is also co-author with Shel Israel of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.
Resources
This free podcast is from our Where Conference series.
For The Conversations Network: