Foursquare
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| Social network (internet) | |
| languages | English , depending on the app also German , French , Italian , Russian , Spanish , Japanese |
| operator | Foursquare Labs, Inc. |
| editorial staff | Dennis Crowley , |
| user | 60 million (August 2015) |
| Registration | Yes |
| On-line | March 11, 2009 |
| https://foursquare.com/ | |
Foursquare is a location-based recommendation service in the form of application software ("App") for restaurants and other locations. Social check-ins are possible at these locations via the sister app Swarm . The service uses the GPS capability of the devices to determine the current location of the user.
history
Foursquare was founded in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai . Crowley had previously started the similar project Dodgeball as part of his undergraduate studies at New York University . This was bought by Google Inc. in 2005 , discontinued in 2009 and replaced by Google Latitude . The interaction with users in Dodgeball was based purely on SMS, while Foursquare is mainly used internet-based through special apps.
Competitor Facebook also introduced the possibility of checking in at locations with Places , thus offering an alternative to Foursquare, but without the incentive of badges and “mayorhood”.
Functions
Users can also create a personal “to-do list” or share public tips about locations with other users, which can be used, for example, to recommend restaurants.
Foursquare also offers the option of (indirectly) rating places. Every shop or other attraction receives a so-called score (value) between 1 and 10, which signals the popularity based on approvals and check-ins. Foursquare does not provide any information about the exact algorithm for the calculation, but experts assess the function as a direct attack on Qype or Yelp .
criticism
Like many other apps, Foursquare also collects personal data without informing the user. This is particularly problematic with the Android operating system; there, in order to use it at all, the program must be granted the right to read the address data on the smartphone from the app and send it to the Foursquare server.
Competitor
Foursquare has the following competitors in the area of reviews:
- Yelp is a platform on which users can post location-based reviews.
- TripAdvisor is a platform that specializes in travel, where travelers make recommendations to other travelers.
Individual evidence
- ^ Harrison Weber: Foursquare by the numbers: 60M registered users, 50M MAUs, and 75M tips to date. In: VentureBeat. August 18, 2015, accessed March 14, 2018 .
- ↑ dodgeball.com officially Google'd. In: TechCrunch. October 18, 2006, accessed November 11, 2012 .
- ↑ Lars Budde: Foursquare is competing with the new Qype rating function. (No longer available online.) In: t3n magazine . November 6, 2012, archived from the original on November 10, 2012 ; Retrieved November 11, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Achim Barczok: Silent Post. What Android devices are sending home , in c't 5/2014, accessed on February 14, 2014
