[qeorge]

I largely agree with the OP. This reminds me of Loopt.

If I were Foursquare, I would use the metadata (reviews, checkins, etc) to build a Yellow Pages site that's powered by 4sq users gestures. But I'd leave monitization out of the consumer app entirely, and just focus on making it great and popular.

Internet yellow pages is crazy boring, stupidly profitable, and waiting for disruption. Google Places and Yelp are currently passing for disruption in that space. 4sq is in a unique position to do better.

Ditto for the Better Business Bureau.

Just my $.02.

[jshen]

"Internet yellow pages is crazy boring, stupidly profitable"

How is it stupidly profitable? I used to work at YP.com and they make all their money on the dead tree book

[msellout]

perhaps he meant the industry in general (of listing merchants) rather than the Yellow Pages company specifically.

[jshen]

How does the industry in general make its money?

[corylehey]

i've been a long time foursquare hater, I never understood why anyone would want to "check-in". That being said I have used their explore feature for restaurants in NYC for about a year, and find it vastly superior to yelp.

Why? Tips.

When i look up a place on foursquare I immediately know "what to order" at a given place, I often will look up a place at foursquare while I am sitting there deciding what to order. The question will be how can they sustain the same level of content generation if their main hook is fading.

[stephenhuey]

Can you explain what you mean? The current Yelp app has both Reviews and Tips.

[jcampbell1]

For me, Yelp has been completely ruined by what amounts to YouTube comments.

"The server was totally rude. She put lemon in my diet coke when I asked TWICE not to do that. It was the worst experience of my life."

Foursquare seems to have less batshit insane people on it. They actually do helpful things like post the wireless password.

[pekk]

whoever captures more of the market gets those insane people too.

[jcampbell1]

I agree in principle, but I also think something about the check-in mechanics improve the quality.

[PaulHoule]

Do you want batshit crazy customers?

[potatolicious]

Yelp focuses on the "Wall of Text" type of review. Foursquare tips are one-liners.

So instead of:

"My date and I came here a few weeks ago and the initial ambience was great. We waited around 20 minutes for seats and the decor out front was..."

you get

"Try the veal. Seriously."

One is much, much more useful in the mobile context, the other is almost useless. Yelp also over-emphasizes the star-rating system (which at this point is completely irrelevant and pure noise) while Foursquare simply throw tips at you.

Overall I've found that Foursquare Explore's recommendations in NYC to be vastly superior to Yelp. I'd be sad if they go under.

[corylehey]

combo of a lot of things, yelp's UI always seems 2 years old, feels bloated, and generally takes me longer to do anything. I use yelp on the web, foursquare on the go.

[marssaxman]

You check in so your friends know where you are and can choose to come join you there. Among my circle of friends, the understanding is that checking in on foursquare implicitly invites anyone who sees the checkin to drop in if they happen to be in the area.

[martinshen]

Just like Loopt though, they have inherent value (some company will buy them for at least $100m). I shared some of my thoughts on the transaction here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5533949

[bergie]

That is sort of what Google's Niantic Labs is doing with Field Trip, though with more a discovering cool places angle than finding local businesses: http://www.fieldtripper.com/

Field Trip uses data from bunch of different sources, but also utilizes Ingress players as sort of "location scouts".

Or at least that is what it looks like, with the focus on gathering new portals at points of interest.

[incision]

>Or at least that is what it looks like, with the focus on gathering new portals at points of interest.

Yeah.

I played Ingress pretty heavily from launch till the beginning of this year.

As best I can tell, it's just what you describe with players serving to scout and submit new points of interest and check/refine the accuracy of existing submissions. I expect they're also gathering a wealth of location fine location data that could be applied to walking directions and public accessibility.

One of the more interesting possibilities I see for Ingress data is insight how information moves in social networks and how far a person will travel out of their way for a "reward".

I can see the collection and distribution of redeemable codes at Ingress cross-promotion locations being useful insight into a refined take on daily deals.

[dchuk]

It's wayyyyyyy too late in the game for foursquare to ignore monetization entirely

[pyre]

The point of the comment was to monetize the data in making a YellowPages-type app, while leaving monetization out of the other part of the business. Basically make money using the data that your users give you while ignoring attempts to directly turn those users into money (i.e. serving ads).