Foursquare Business Model

When I initiated my first Blog ever, I still was not aware of the major utility of Foursquare. My goal was to create a place where people could share experiences and recommend places and even bring an added value to any place they visit. That’s why, I launched a blog entitled: “Live it, Feel it, Share it”.
However, I’ve discovered that Foursquare does it better! First of all, it provides the service with a friendly graphical user interface and takes advantage of the various networking tools as well as the GPS locator. Upon a user’s request, Foursquare updates the user’s network giving his present location with the exact address (street, city, state etc…) and informs the network on the user’s views, recommendations or preventions. The idea relies heavily on the usage of the mobile phone device that became a “must have” in our society. In addition, Foursquare provides a link between the website and the user by following the sequence: “website-user-phone-location-network” with only one click away. This can also be accomplished through sending text messages or using the smartphones applications.
“Top 10 things to visit in XXX city” is the tourist’s Bible, having a wide audience and a trusted reputation, with sales hitting the ceiling. Yet sometimes, it could lead some people to undesired locations only because a user has followed the “Guide” which has been highly recommended from people with different tastes.
Nowadays, Foursquare provides somehow a similar service, but with a crucial difference: the person that has recommended a specific location is part of the user’s network, hence the user has the opportunity to trust that judgment or not, whereas the authors of “Top 10 things” are generally unknown.
Although it’s still funded by the founders, Foursquare is on the brink of becoming a gold mine as it follows one of the best advertising and impressing techniques in the market. It allows any announcement to easily reach the required audience with a specific recommendation, hence a method which paves the way for high revenues and the obvious cost cutting of several marketing expenses which are still used elsewhere. These creative methods will expectantly increase competition and therefore improve quality of businesses and customer service.
The fact that it’s an incentivizing game, people will not even be close to get bored, but rather increase in the usage of an innovative platform.
According to businessinsider.com, major companies such as “Pepsi” are extremely interested in the idea, and are looking for possibilities to advertize there and they are not the only ones. Nonetheless, Foursquare did not reach yet the critical mass in absolute number of users, and definitely not close to the number of Facebook’s users.
On a separate note, Daniel Porot; a leading pioneer in career design and job hunting and an internationally recognized career expert; advices his audience to refrain from using Facebook, calling it a “professional suicide tool”, although Facebook has exceeded 500 Million users. Therefore, it’s imperative that Foursquare developers avoid such; free yet unwanted; publicity. I believe that the key factor of its success would be its simplicity.
From a financial angle, Facebook, the most famous networking platform has turned down a $750 million offer, hoping for approximately $2billion according to googlesystem.blogspot.com, only 1 year after its launch. Yet on the long run Foursquare will be the new “Top 10 things to do”, with added values such as fun of competition and friends recommendations, hence a more reliable and easy-to-access tool without the burden of some heavy applications. Investing in this creative platform can be seen as “investing at the right place and at the right time”, given its freshness, innovation and its evident affordability.