The news story I found talks about how Foursquare
wants to be popular like other social networks, but not fall short when it
comes to being profitable like the others.
How does the CEO, Dennis Crowley, plan to make
this social site a place to frequent and stay profitable? He plans to
incorporate coupons to entice users, individualize search tabs/engines based on
people’s habits, along with a redesign of the original Foursquare app.
Although there are individuals that can’t stand
all the Foursquare check-ins, Crowley shrugs of the haters and hopes that with
offering these promotions for users that check-in starting in July, the social
site will generate more revenue, be able to compete with its competition
(Groupon, Facebook, and Yelp), and gain more users by “warming up” to the
notion of location sharing (WSJ).
The CEO states that meeting with merchants that
are frequented most often and also those that used to see many check-ins at
their establishment and have seen a decline seems to be going well. They
discuss what has been working for them, what hasn’t, and what maybe they haven’t
thought of to get new and old customers to come back. Right now there are many strategizing
meet and great sessions going on to figure out what works to maintain customers
and pump up this social network to be able to compete with the rest of the big
dogs.
As Crowley points out, not only is Foursquare
looking to grow its user base, but also sees that in order to do that and stay
current/popular, it must also expand its business and what it can offer the
consumer. Which he feels is a win, win for everyone involved.
I thought this article was interesting because I
am on the fence about Foursquare. It is fun to check-in and see what people are
doing, but I can see that plus people’s personal lives unfold all in one on
Facebook. I forget easily about Foursquare and tend to not check-in or use it.
Knowing that there may be other reasons for me to use this social site such as
directing me to my favorite spots when I am out of town or saving money with
special promotions, it will make me want to use it more. Instead of feeling
like it is just a game and a check-in on my friends, it will help a single mom/college
student, like myself, to save money and time! Both something I cherish….
I believe that it's a great idea to offer more incentives to entice individuals to use foursquare. The only quandary I have with this is that social media sites like foursquare are using their subscriber’s cookie history as a way to entice the individual with numerous offers that are aimed at products that they may be interested in. This is all done by searching through an individuals browsing history. For me this violates the privacy that citizens of the United States should be guaranteed. Unfortunately though there are many loopholes when it comes to the electronic privacy of the consumer. And furthermore; the United States needs to adopt OECD-grade privacy laws, which will benefit the consumer from having their personal information compromised.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Ryan Lucas
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