Actually, Foursquare became a lot more interesting to me as a user in the past 6 months. It finally has enough coverage that I can reliably assume a place always has foursquare, the mobile client (at least on iOS) is nice, there are enough badges (which aren't NYC-specific) to keep it entertaining, and they're starting to do some really interesting things (the Amex Whole Foods promotion, for instance). They also are putting great discovery features in the app -- menus and hours, which is the main thing I use Yelp for (since the quality of Yelp reviews is so often hit or miss, I care a lot more about where my friends go).

People have been talking about location-based apps for 30-50 years. Dennis Crowley has been working on them in various forms for a decade. I don't see why you'd think they don't have a place in the future, unless you think people are going to stop going out and doing stuff.

You very well may be right. See this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3665666

Input welcome.

I wouldn't say you were totally wrong -- the core checkin model hasn't changed, but it's just like twitter (as you point out) where the use case and userbase is what evolves and eventually hits critical mass.

That kind of thing is why I like to do pure-tech startups vs. social startups; it's a lot harder to predict success with the consumer things. When they do take off, though, they turn into Facebook -- and Foursquare definitely has done well for itself ($600mm valuation last year, so presumably over a billion now, a few years after founding) on the business metrics, and seems to have good user metrics too.

Two of the firm's investors are buying more shares in the company, and the valuation is rumored to be $700 million. How is it clear that it won't have a place in the future when those two data points suggest something very different?

I'm not a user of FourSquare, but the comment struck me as far from a fact.

I think it's just one of those companies whose worth is not obvious. I suck at figuring out how services monetize their data, but as I understand, their API is nothing to scoff at.

Maybe it's more of a data service than a social service now?

I made my comment based on the fact that they don't seem to be adding any new features. It still remains a manual check-in service, while there is a lot more you can do beyond that.

But reading your comment made me reconsider mine. After all, Twitter also are still the same as when they started (vs Facebook, who are constantly adding new features). So now I'm not sure anymore about my original comment. Should I delete it?

In the future, I shouldn't comment on such things before actually using them.

i agree that Foresquare may be on the wane.

i am starting to see that some of these social websites might just have a normal lifespan like the run of a TV show. Signing up to something like Foresquare might be like starting to watch "Seinfeld" or "Friends", it's exciting at first, you get to know the characters and you get engaged, and then after a normal involvement arc you move on to new things.

nothing wrong with it,,,, unless of course you staff up 100 engineers thinking that this will be a new permanent part of the landscape ;)

sell to FB when it's public and grab your loot!

That's definitely not what the numbers say. Foursquare is one of the strongest start-ups with good competitive advantages and a solid team. The Foursquare brand is very strong, they've successfully competed against Facebook and Google and (at least judging by their performance over last year) they only do better and better. See some traffic data for reference: http://www.quantcast.com/foursquare.com

Nobody knows what the future will bring, but I'm very inclined to say that Foursquare has given no signs of stagnation. How can this company become less relevant after the introduction of NFC, faster smartphones and more precise GPS systems?

Foursquare is three years old, has around a hundred employees, and is valued (however measured) at over 500 million dollars. At what point do we stop using the word "start-up" to avoid rendering the term completely meaningless?

That's a great point. I think the term start-up should apply to high growth technology companies in the initial stages of their hockey stick curve (or which ever growth curve applies). Judging Foursquare on that basis, and assuming they can be as big as Twitter, they could still grow by about 15x, so indeed they might be in the early stages of their growth and could be considered a start-up.

However, valid criteria for classifying a company as a start-up might include: rounds of funding (# or type), number of employees, relative maturity (compared to industry peers), market share, culture or maturity of the firm's core technology.

It is indeed quite messy and hard to classify a company as a "start-up".

I disagree; over the last three months up here in suburban Minnesota, I've finally started to see multiple people already checked in when I open the Foursquare app to check in at mundane locations like grocery stores, clinics, and libraries. To me, that indicates that it's finally gaining widespread acceptance and usage, akin to Facebook.

That is not clear to me at all. Why do you say that?

Obviously it could go either way, but I feel like Foursquare is just starting to hit their prime as they shift away from solely a check-in app to leveraging their existing check-in data (1.5 Billion check-ins) to provide better recommendations for users.

Oh man, I couldn't disagree more. Not only is Foursquare still relevant and presumably growing, but there are a whole bunch of cool services building on Foursquare location data in interesting ways (Instagram, Path, Sonar, Banjo, etc.).

And your data point is YOU because you don't use it?

Nobody goes to that club anymore… it's too crowded.

I agree - I can care less about checking in or who checked in or local deals or coupons. Fad fad fad.