Posts tagged media

There is much talk about the developments happening at Facebook HQ thanks to CNET report saying that Foursquare’s competition is imminent and that too in a few weeks time. We all know by now that foursquare has been leading the Geo-Location based race and has already taken the cake away from GoWalla by adding innovative checkin rewards feature which has been accepted by major players such as Pizza Hut, Starbucks Coffee etc. 

Also reports suggest that facebook walked off from acquisition talks of foursquare after the owners of the Geo-Social-App asked for 25% more on top of US$ 120 million. Am clueless on how that valuation was reached? 

So is Foursquare now intimidated by Facebook’s own roll out plans? I don’t think they should be and this is why:

1. Foursquare is growing at a rapid pace which is more than good for a new start-up. (don’t worry about facebook’s 500 million)
2. The relationship & ease of working with Foursquare is all that is needed to be sorted out, this will make brands more comfortable. (facebook yet has no clue on what direction to take)
3. Early adopters have already created innovative solutions based on Foursquare’s API and have been seeing success pushing the same to their consumers. 
4. More impressive is the fact that majority of foursquare based promotions don’t even need a special app.. they can be pushed via other Social Networks and Medias. 
5. Its estimated that 90% of Foursquare users are via Facebook, I think this is due to the facebook connect feature & don’t see a reason why this figure will go down… unless facebook themselves has another competition. Which also seems possible given the zest of some developers. 
6. Foursquare will have loyalists as long as people gain from using the service… I’ve made this point before in my Gowalla vs Foursquare experiment. So unless facebook has something radically different, don’t even be bothered.
7. And my last point, Google’s continued failure at making their own Location based services popular should serve as an example. Foursquare has the advantage of being a small company which gives it a lot of flexibility… the larger corporations aren’t so. Hence they either try to acquire (easy way out) or simply duplicate the service.

Now lets see what happens… I’m definitely interested in facebook’s roll out of location based features… but for now I don’t see it as a threat to foursquare unlike other social media bloggers. 

Remember the Mantra: “Competition is always Good”. Go foursquare! 

Infographic.. ever imagined why so many applications were being developed or who was leading & where? Check this out:

Via: MBA Online