Yesterday, we got a nice little breakdown of which clients are used most often for the location-based service Foursquare (hint: still the iPhone). Today, the company has some new big news to share via a tweet: they’re now doing over a million check-ins a week.
Not even a month ago, Foursquare noted that they were seeing a check-in each second. We extrapolated this out to show that they were getting roughly 86,000 check-ins a day. But if you stretch those numbers out over a week, you get “only” 600,000 check-ins. That means that in under a month, Foursquare’s check-in rate has almost doubled. Actually, it has doubled. As Foursquare also notes in the tweet, the last seven days have seen 1.2 million check-ins.
While traffic may be up threefold over the past two months, the check-in rate is growing even faster.
Traffic but no revenue model. Fail.
Traffic = revenue!!
As of now most of the traffic is from US and I think this may be a become a hit among youngsters ..
Thats is correct…REVENUE
Actually, real traffic = Real revenue. Fake traffic (bot, junk, untargetted) = No revenue.
Currently Foursquare is starting to dominate the way how you discover geo-targets in USA (using social media and game) More details: http://bit.ly/foursquare-detailed-review
You may be a bit biased, Foursquare special offers.
May be but
Once they reach two millions they can start pushing of ads
a)By suggesting places for a user to check-in, For e.g; if you are in San Francisco then a foursquare can suggest places(sponsored) for check in
b)Then They can also start charging for Foursquare special offers
c)Also it has huge potential with retailers like Wal-mart where they can offer some special discount for customers who check-in at a store in particular location more
This is a win-win situation for both fousquare and advertisers as they can advertise at a low price..
“Once they reach two millions they can start pushing of ads”
Why is the model always to get as many users as possible then bombard them with ads?
At some point in the future we’re going to become so saturated with ads that they’ll be impossible to differentiate. Somebody do something creative already.
Because when they start advertising, they’ll loose 1M customers and still have 1M to sustain the revenue.
So True…Traffic is a Huge factor
Traffic then revenue model. Win.
I wonder what their level of sustainability it is? Foursquare and Gowalla are cool at first but the coolness quickly wears off. It’s checkin, checkin, and yeah, checkin. Where’s the social engagement?
Foursquare would really benefit from adding the ability to comment on checkins and even adding photo posts. It’s ridiculous that you have to rely on Twitter to communicate with a user.
And don’t get me started on pushing your checkins to Twitter… Twitter is too noisy as it is.
Whats the point of foursqaure, MyTown, GoWalla and other service like these?
I am not dissin’ these sites but I just want a user explanation and not blogs or sites. I read about them but never bothered to check it out, because the posts didn’t interested me enough.
Agreed. I don’t understand, if I was so inclined, couldn’t I just install the foursquare app and check-in to random places even if I’m not actually at the places, and then win free food/drinks?
That seems like a very odd system..
It’s all about connecting with your friends and see where they have gone and which places they like most
From another prespective
a) A bar/restaurant which has more checkins in foursquare than the other is likely to be frequented by more people
b) Also users write tips about foursquare places by which you may get to know more about the place..
So, if 4square has 300k users and is averaging 1.2 million check-ins a week, that means the average user is checking in 4 times a week -meaning they are using the location-based gaming application once every other day to check-in.
Is the tip/review content on foursquare deep enough that a mobile user would select foursquare over review sites like yelp?
I agree too – but I have no friends locally and don’t out much. Thus it makes sense that I don’t get it!
There is no point. Just like Google Wave. This one too shall pass.
The point is: location-specific, interest-targeted advertising. You give up your twitter/fb password(s), they build an interest net on you, and use that coupled with where you are to focus ads that will result in higher percent of sales, thus higher rates.
Users get fun, friend hook ups, advice on what to try, knowledge of things nearby.
Not that difficult.
The FourCrunch dude is gonna love having his FourCrunch update, haha… how many laptop PC’s has he given you on the sly for this kind of coverage? FourCrunch strikes again !
can’t link to his comment, but it was located here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/20/pegshot-puts-your-video-message-on-a-map/
Traffic then revenue is not a bad model. The hardest part with any web service is keeping users and growing. Once you have that, adding in revenue is easy in comparison. For any mobile/web company, traffic is the #1 key.
Getting traffic is the hard part but the revenue is easy.
Hi Guys,
We here at Taggstr hear you!
Taggstr is a brand new way for you to share your experiences on your iPhone. We believe that going out is not about checking-in and checking-out. It’s about experiencing the world and letting everybody know about it. By allowing you to leave “taggs” wherever you go, Taggstr enables you to leave your own little marks. Not only is Taggstr a tagging platform, but it allows you to easily find interesting places around you, keeping you in the know! Type up a description, upload photos and videos, and tell everyone where you’ve been and what happened while you were there. Taggstr enables you to make your world more “taggable” and leave your own marks on places around the world. Taggstr will be launching to the app store next month so stay tuned!
Our advantage over the recent competition is that not only do we offer more media capabilities for your tagging, but our core model is dependent on you sharing with your friends. We believe that going out isnt about checking-in and checking-out, its about sharing that experience. Our website will be launching soon and we’re really excited about our service!
If you’d like to know more, please email us at contact@taggstr.com.
You lost me at http://www.taggstr.com
sorry john….the website isnt up yet. we’ll have something up very soon that’ll outline our service.
feel free to email us at contact@taggstr and we’ll let you know when we’re giving out BETA keys.
I love the name. it sounds intriguing. Tell us more about Taggstr, what will it do? can we use it with twitter? I hope we can see our friends tweets on it that would be useful. But give us more details, I hope you focus on restaurants, from my own research people seek the most information on places to eat.
Hi Tim,
If you contact us at contact@taggstr.com, we’ll be happy to answer some questions you have. For everyone else, we’ll be having our site up in the next week or so for Pre-BETA signups. We are very excited. Please send any questions/comments to contact@taggstr.com
Thank You
I think the catalyst was opening up locations outside specific cities. I’ve noticed an explosion of new locales in the past few weeks. I know I’ve certainly been checking in more often.
The Twalky platform (http://www.twalky.com) enable users to build location-based social media apps with check-ins (foursquare), status (twitter), comments (yelp), news (outside.in) or with all of them (TwalkyEvents-iphone app built on twalky’s APIs).
Althought the Twalky platform is not available to the public at the moment, anyone can register at htp://www.twalky.com to see some of the apps created by private beta users.
I’d probably be more inclined to use foursquare and check in more often, but apparently, my city must be a ghost town, because it never finds any “venues” around me. I mean, I only live in a city of 750,000 people… Nope, nothing here at all!
Foursquare has been a waste of time, now here I am wasting more time complaining about it! Haha
Foursquare is totally useless unless you’re in a large city. I live in a town of 3,000 people now.
yea sorry guys….the website isn’t up yet…
we’ll have something up in the next week
Dude, you can’t have an epic video without Eddie Van Halen… and you can’t get Eddie Van Halen without an epic video. Duh!
I’m a huge FourSquare fan. The point of the site, for my crowd anyway, is to make it easier to find and hang out with your friends.
This week, for example, I went to three parties in a night judging by which of my friends were at each. What Twitter does for knowing “what’s up” in the news or pop culture, FourSquare does for knowing what your friends are up to all the time. It’s radar.
It’s not for everyone, but it’s useful to several types of user. I wish I had it in college. But for now, I bet the user base is still heavily techy.
I came in here to say that the million check-ins this week partly came from New York’s Social Media Week. But I was wrong. How many people attended?Maybe five thousand? Give half of them two checkins a night and you’ve got a bump of 25,000. Double my numbers and you’ve still only got 5% of the total checkins this week. That’s great news for Foursquare.
Lastly, what’s the revenue model? FourSquare already charges some businesses to feature specials on the FourSquare app. Bravo paid to run a contest where FS users try to checkin at certain locations. That sounds like good money to me!
Pro-tip: Anyone using “fail” as a sentence is probably talking out their ass.
Why wouldn’t Dennis lie about their stats?
So traction is interesting but how about some reporting behind it? I mean if I’m going to read about 10 Foursquare/Gowalla/MyTown stories a week, it would be nice to dig a little deeper into the story.
Where is the growth coming from? Is it all user growth or more engagement per user? What sorts of venues are getting the most check-ins? Food, bars, entertainment? What’s the breakdown by age group?
How are people using it other than game elements? Or is that all there is?
Ah.. I swear I have contributed to this outstanding growth.
Wow, if they get 1 million check ins a week my application is going to be great. It is going to be a market changer, every app is going to want to associate themselves with me but I will only sell to the highest bidder. I wont tell anyone about my application before it is developed. There are so many trolls on these boards, scanning posts to steal ideas.
All these services are unoriginal, I will let you in on a secret, people go out to be social, I know it is very hard for socially isolated individuals to understand but normal people dont go out to play on their phones.
How many Social network do you need? This wont help you solve how miserable you are.
But at the same time, I am surprised to find out there are so many empty socially isolated people in this country that have to hide behind a 2-3 screen. To them, I have to tell them put your mobile devices down and go out and live your lives, meet people, INTERACT with humans.
This is why you withdraw to your mobile devices, you are only perpetuating your own problem.
People are abusing the spirit of Social Networks, dont mask you misery, accept you have a problem, join a club, get a hobby, go exercise, travel the world, visit museums, volunteer your time to help those truly in need.
+1 the world we knew my friend, is long time gone. seriously, the amount of time “humanbeings” spend doing silly things like watching tv or “socializing” through web is reaching new heights. where is it all going?? if you drink to much water too fast, you will choke eventually, no exceptions. I wonder how its going to look when it will blow. hope will be around to see it.
so the whole idea is to let your friends tell you which place you should/should not stay where you go to certain place. — so, how on earth am I going to stayed with “sponsored/paid” spot in such a situation?? the company killed its own revenue model?? dont get it.
I wonder how Yelp will start to affect them. Yelp recently added the “check-in” feature as well, and to me it actually seemed like a more appropriate place to put something like that.
Foursquare seems more responsible for annoying Twitter posts than anything. I don’t care if my friend Bob is the Mayor of “Home.”
Actually, with each passing week, it becomes harder for new users to become mayors.
With no incentive, new users will stop drop off quickly.