My post on Foursquare seems timely now that they announced they’ll be splitting the app into to apps. My feeling about its waning popularity is verified by some of the quotes in this article: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/1/5666062/foursquare-swarm-new-app

“The core issue was that its user growth had slowed considerably and fallen behind its peers in the world of mobile social networks.”

In my Cellfire days, we had rather intense “discussions” about Foursquare and the value that it provided to users and/or marketers. This was in the Ai (After iPhone) days of mobile when many Bi (Before iPhone) companies were trying to capitalize on the growing ubiquity of mobile. In fact, Dennis Crowley, the founder of Foursquare, was trying to do this as well. Having founded Dodgeball in the Bi era, he sold it to Google and then founded Foursquare in the Ai era. Gowalla is another example, starting in the Bi era (well, the iPhone had launched but not the app store) and acquired by Facebook in 2012.

The problem that many people had with Foursquare was that, due to gamification of check-ins, it was a game to many of its users. And if you didn’t like games, you didn’t get enough value out of it.

So now after years of trying to change the app from a location game to a discovery app, they’ve decided to create two apps, one for discovery (think Yelp) and one for friend location awareness. And I have no idea whether I’ll continue to use it. My main value, other than the game features, is the digital breadcrumbs I’ve left. I’ll let you know what happens.

Meanwhile, here’s a look back at the mobile world in 2010.