Friday, January 19, 2018

Foursquare has clear identification of user intent

Link: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/19/foursquare-is-finally-proving-its-dollar-value/

Years ago when Foursquare first came out, my friends and I used to use it as a social media platform to essentially announce to our friends what cool restaurants or workouts we were going to. I always wondered - "how does this app make any money?" When they spun off the check-in feature, I figured it was because people like me had largely stopped using the platform for that purpose, but were still happy to use it to create lists of places to go in our home city or elsewhere, read reviews and tips, and share those lists with our friends. Still, I didn't see how they would be making money without adding an advertising component to the app, given the service was free to consumers.

With over 50 million active users whose clear intent is to find a restaurant, workout, nail salon, etc. the digital marketing use case is strong. It would be interesting to see the reaction of the users to sponsored content, as traffic to those links will probably need to be supplanted with high ratings for that particular business.

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