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by rsobers 4418 days ago
The immediate result: a diminished user experience. Strategy tax in full effect.
3 comments

Don't worry. Facebook will never do something like this to the Oculus Rift.
Love this quote!

But seriously, who didn't think this was going to happen?

I hold out hope every time someone claims such BS, I like trying to be optimistic.

I don't really -expect- them to follow through tho. :/

No wonder I was not able to find newly opened restaurants and some local spots which were available before the auto-update.
Facebook doesn't seem to measure for quality, they just seem to measure for quantity..
FWIW, Foursquare data in Europe is not very good, I think FB geo data is better. I've mentioned this before on HN, Foursquare in Europe is quite unreliable, with places appearing way off the real location, badly categorised (e.g. a restaurant categorised as a bar), etc. I guess quality on these services depends where you are.
I am curious how this can be possible?

Does FB and Foursquare utilise broadly similar geo-location technology from within the mobile device?

Not saying you are incorrect - just wondering if a technical expert could elaborate on the accuracy.

They buy different starting data sets.

I guess most services also use things like the free GNIS data set from the U.S. government (it has good coverage, but the geocoding is not amazing).

Edit: And an entity like GNIS actually has less resources than Foursquare gets with its army of users (or at least, a lot less feedback generation).

Probably more of a human thing than technical. The accuracy benefits from crowd-sourcing and Foursquare is used relatively significantly more in the US.
Only in the US. And Places will get better faster. Not a bad strategy.