[nerme]

Companies like FourSquare remind me of pop songs.

They're catchy, it's hard to describe exactly what makes them work, and if you're lucky, you'll write one your entire life.

What I don't get is why a "hit song" can be considered an entire company. Why is FourSquare trying to raise millions of dollars of investment money? Why not try and come up with another 7 or 8 products?

I mean seriously, what are they looking to become, the next Google? Do they have some sort of BadgeRank algorithm? The next Facebook? Are you going to be able to buy location based ads so you can direct people to your FanBadge pages so you can find out how many people like your Badges?

To me it seems like if investors, instead of investing in a gaming company, invested in just ONE game.

"Here you go, here's $20million, kid. Make sure that Warcraft keeps being the best game. Just keep adding to it, and adding to it, and adding to it, forever."

I'm hoping that FourSquare see themselves as a publisher of fun, little things, and try to develop new, even more fun, little things, and not become a big bloated "what the hell has this thing become" product.

[Luc]

I know next to nothing about FourSquare, but it seems like you could make a pretty penny knowing the location of customers, and the businesses they regularly frequent. Coupons, loyalty cards, yellow pages (get paid for referring new customers), etc. It would be straightforward to implement technically, but you would need to have first-mover advantage and a sales force to get shops on-board...

[whakojacko]

Foursquare makes a lot of sense from a business perspective-the data they are collecting is very valuable.

Why users would continually want to publish their location information is beyond me, but if 4Sq has figured out a way to game them to do so, more power to them.