Foursquare (service)
Encyclopedia
Foursquare, stylized as foursquare, is a location-based social networking website for mobile
devices, such as smartphone
s. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile web
site, text messaging or a device-specific application
by selecting from a list of venues the application locates nearby. Location is based on GPS hardware
in the mobile
device or network location provided by the application. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes "badges".
The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley
and Naveen Selvadurai
. Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball
as his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University
. Google
bought Dodgeball in 2005 and shut it down in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude
. Dodgeball user interactions were based on SMS
technology, rather than an application.
Foursquare is the second iteration of the same idea, that people can use mobile devices to interact with their environment. As of June 2011, the company reported it had 10 million registered users. The company was expected to pass 750 million check-ins before the end of June 2011, with an average of about 3 million check-ins per day. 50 percent of users come from outside US and also 50 percent of users are female. Support for French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese was added in February, 2011. Support for Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Thai was added in September, 2011.
, Facebook
, or both. In version 1.3 of their iPhone
application, foursquare enabled push-notification of friend updates, which they call "Pings". Users can also earn badges by checking in at locations with certain tags, for check-in frequency, or for other patterns such as time of check-in. The company has stated that users will be able to add their own custom badges to the site in the future.
Users can create a "To Do" list for their private use and add "Tips" to venues that other users can read, which serve as suggestions for great things to do, see or eat at the location.
There are a handful of introductory badges that are earned as milestones in usage. Some badges are tied to venue "tags" and the badge earned depends on the tags applied to the venue. Other badges may be specific to a city, venue, event, or date. Some badges use identical icons, but are earned differently. There is no official foursquare badge list available from the company.
On September 23, 2010, foursquare announced that users can now earn badges for completing tasks as well as checking in. On October 22, 2010, astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock
unlocked the NASA
Explorer badge by checking into foursquare from the International Space Station
.
All superusers can review a queue of requested changes for a single city, and can select a new city at will.
joined foursquare, with the intention that the staff at the White House
will use the service to post tips from places the president has visited.
, Symbian
, Android, webOS, Windows Phone 7
and BlackBerry
applications. A Maemo
application is in early development stage and is not featured on the foursquare website. Users with Symbian
phones and Pocket PCs (Windows Mobile
touchscreen) can also use foursquare via Waze
, which is also available for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. Also, there's another application for Symbian users named "Sym4Square" is similar to the application for Android, BlackBerry and iPhone. Users may also use their mobile browsers to access foursquare mobile, but feature phone
users must search for venues manually instead of using GPS
that PDA
applications can use.
(4sqDay) is a global event launched in 2010 in Tampa, FL. The event is held every April 16th (April being the 4th month and the 16th being equal to four squared). The official site is: 4sqday.com. Some cities have made official proclamations of April 16th being Foursquare Day (Atlanta, Georgia
; Austin, Texas
; Cincinnati, Ohio
; Corpus Christi, Texas
; Gaithersburg, Maryland
; Indianapolis, Indiana
; Kalamazoo, Michigan
; Kennesaw, Georgia
; Manchester, New Hampshire
; Miami, Florida
; New York City
; Portsmouth, New Hampshire
; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Seattle, Washington
; Miami, Florida
; Victoria, Canada; Toronto, Canada; Ramat Hasharon, Israel
)
, Wall Street Journal, and Zagat
have added an "Add to My foursquare" button, which will add the location to the user's to-do list.
There exists a third party Windows Phone 7 client that implements these v3.0 features. As of July 4, 2011, the official foursquare application for Windows Phone 7 also has these features.
, Andreessen Horowitz
, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. The company raised $1.35 million in its Series A and $20 million in its Series B round.
On June 24, 2011 foursquare raised $50 million on a $600 million valuation.
, The New York Times
and several other firms to offer tips, specials and new badges to followers.
Foursquare acknowledged a grass-roots effort that started in Tampa, Florida
by declaring April 16 as a "Foursquare Day
".
.
In February 2010, a site known as Please Rob Me was launched. Please Rob Me scrapes data from public Twitter messages that have been pushed through foursquare. The purpose of the site is to raise awareness about revealing too much information.
In 2010, white hat hacker Jesper Andersen discovered a vulnerability
on foursquare that raised privacy concerns. foursquare's location pages display a grid of 50 pictures that is generated randomly, regardless of their privacy settings. Whenever a user "checks-in" at that location, their picture is generated on that location page, even if they only want their friends to know where they are. Andersen then crafted a script that collected check-in information. It is estimated that Andersen collected around 875,000 check-ins. Andersen contacted foursquare about the vulnerability, and foursquare responded by fixing their privacy settings.
Also in 2010, issues arose for users who use Twitter to check in at locations, which are connected to Foursquare; specifically for those who have not disabled the option that shows when you are at a certain place – raising the issue of "who are you with" and "who are you not with" on foursquare. These users have no control whether or not someone else announces their location. An example of this problem would be:
This creates two problems. One, Jane's privacy is innocently compromised by Bob. Two, it appears that Jane is hanging out with Bob when in reality, she checked in hours ago while grabbing a quick latte. Also, if Bob ousts Jane as mayor of that particular Starbucks and has configured his settings to communicate his promotion to Twitter, his feed now sees Jane as someone who frequents that particular Starbucks. These privacy concerns can be avoided if people a) don’t connect their Twitter names to their foursquare profiles or b) don’t allow themselves to be listed as checked in at any particular place.
The US Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) is currently urging the White House to increase Internet privacy measures, especially for mobile devices and social networks, stating that federal laws have not kept up with the applications to ensure that personal information isn’t being improperly used.
Further discussion is currently going on with the FTC and the type of information that could be tracked online. According to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, said several companies such as Microsoft and Mozilla have done a good job of putting tools on their browsers to allow users to voluntarily opt out of being tracked on the Web. But he said that without “baseline privacy protections” across the Web industry, consumers will face a patchwork of privacy policies that could differ Web site by Web site. Also, “Do Not Track is no longer just a concept. It is becoming a reality,” Leibowitz said at the hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee. “An effective Do Not Track system would go beyond simply opting consumers out of receiving targeted advertisements. It would opt them out of having their behavior tracked online.” This can be an issue with the future of foursquare, as well as other social networking website devices that track users information.
In response to the privacy issues regarding social networking sites, foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai states that "Users decide if they want to push to Twitter or Facebook, over what information they want to share and send" and "There is a lot of misunderstanding about location based services. On foursquare, if you don’t want to people to know you are on a date or with a friend at a certain place, then you don’t have to let people know. You don’t check in." Selvadurai also states that foursquare does not passively track users, which means a user has to actively check in to let people know where they are. In the future, foursquare also does not plan on being a passive tracking, using GPS and other technology to constantly find location of users.
foursquare updated their privacy policy on Jan 12, 2011. It can be found on their website.
Western Research Laboratories (WRL), led by Bob Mayo had similar though, "hush" concept of gathering information. See
http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreport/Compaq-DEC/WRL-TN-60.pdf.
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
devices, such as smartphone
Smartphone
A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...
s. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile web
Mobile Web
The Mobile Web refers to the use of Internet-connected applications, or browser-based access to the Internet from a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet computer, connected to a wireless network....
site, text messaging or a device-specific application
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
by selecting from a list of venues the application locates nearby. Location is based on GPS hardware
Hardware
Hardware is a general term for equipment such as keys, locks, hinges, latches, handles, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts. Household hardware is typically sold in hardware stores....
in the mobile
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
device or network location provided by the application. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes "badges".
The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley
Dennis Crowley
Dennis Crowley is an American internet entrepreneur best known for co-founding the popular social networking sites Dodgeball and Foursquare.-Education:...
and Naveen Selvadurai
Naveen Selvadurai
Naveen Selvadurai is an internet entrepreneur and co-founder of location-based social networking site Foursquare.com. He was born in Tamil Nadu, India.-Career:...
. Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball
Dodgeball (service)
Dodgeball was a location-based social networking software provider for mobile devices. Users text their location to the service, which then notifies them of crushes, friends, friends' friends and interesting venues nearby...
as his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
bought Dodgeball in 2005 and shut it down in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude
Google Latitude
Google Latitude is a location-aware mobile app developed by Google as a successor to their earlier SMS-based service Dodgeball. Latitude allows a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location. Via their own Google Account, the user's cell phone location is mapped on...
. Dodgeball user interactions were based on SMS
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
technology, rather than an application.
Foursquare is the second iteration of the same idea, that people can use mobile devices to interact with their environment. As of June 2011, the company reported it had 10 million registered users. The company was expected to pass 750 million check-ins before the end of June 2011, with an average of about 3 million check-ins per day. 50 percent of users come from outside US and also 50 percent of users are female. Support for French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese was added in February, 2011. Support for Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Thai was added in September, 2011.
Features
Foursquare is a web and mobile application that allows registered users to post their location at a venue ("check-in") and connect with friends. Check-in requires active user selection and points are awarded at check-in. Users can choose to have their check-ins posted on their accounts on TwitterTwitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, or both. In version 1.3 of their iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
application, foursquare enabled push-notification of friend updates, which they call "Pings". Users can also earn badges by checking in at locations with certain tags, for check-in frequency, or for other patterns such as time of check-in. The company has stated that users will be able to add their own custom badges to the site in the future.
Users can create a "To Do" list for their private use and add "Tips" to venues that other users can read, which serve as suggestions for great things to do, see or eat at the location.
Mayorship
If a user has checked-in to a venue on more days (meaning only one check-in per day qualifies for calculating mayorship) than anyone else in the past 60 days, the check-ins are valid under foursquare's time and distance protocols, and they have a profile photo, they will be crowned "Mayor" of that venue, until someone else earns the title by checking in more times than the previous mayor. On August 26, 2010, foursquare rolled out a new feature which notifies users of the number of days left before he or she is crowned "Mayor". When a user "checks in" to a venue on Foursquare via a mobile app, if he or she is within 10 check-ins of becoming the mayor, foursquare alerts the user of the days left before becoming mayor on the check-in confirmation screen.Badges
Badges are earned by checking into various venues. Some badges can only be earned in a specific city. foursquare has, however, changed the way they handle badges, and now when a user gains a badge, he or she has the same badges across all cities. Once a badge is earned by a player, it will remain on that user's profile indefinitely.There are a handful of introductory badges that are earned as milestones in usage. Some badges are tied to venue "tags" and the badge earned depends on the tags applied to the venue. Other badges may be specific to a city, venue, event, or date. Some badges use identical icons, but are earned differently. There is no official foursquare badge list available from the company.
On September 23, 2010, foursquare announced that users can now earn badges for completing tasks as well as checking in. On October 22, 2010, astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock
Douglas H. Wheelock
Douglas Harry "Wheels" Wheelock is an American astronaut. He has flown in space twice logging 178 days on the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and Russian Soyuz...
unlocked the NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
Explorer badge by checking into foursquare from the International Space Station
International Space Station
The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...
.
Superuser status
The service provides three levels of "Superuser status" (which is not to be confused with the "Super User" badge). Superuser status is conferred on users who have been selected by Foursquare staff for their helpful contributions to the community.All superusers can review a queue of requested changes for a single city, and can select a new city at will.
- Superuser level 1 can edit venue info (address, cross street, phone, Twitter names, map pin location), mark venues as closed, and flag duplicate venues.
- Superuser level 2 can additionally merge duplicate venue listings, adjust the latitude and longitude of a venue, remove tags, add a web address, and add categories.
- Superuser level 3 adds the ability to create and remove venue aliases, as well as access a "global queue" of pending requests needing superuser attention.
Growth
Foursquare started out in 2009 with limited availability in only 100 worldwide metro areas. In January 2010, foursquare changed their location model to allow check-ins from any location worldwide. On February 21, 2011 foursquare reached 7 million users IDs. On August 8, 2011 President Barack ObamaBarack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
joined foursquare, with the intention that the staff at the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
will use the service to post tips from places the president has visited.
Devices
Foursquare currently has iPhoneIPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, Symbian
Symbian
Symbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...
, Android, webOS, Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and is the successor to its Windows Mobile platform, although incompatible with it. Unlike its predecessor, it is primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market...
and BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
applications. A Maemo
Maemo
Maemo is a software platform developed by the Maemo community for smartphones and Internet tablets. It is based on the Debian Linux distribution, but has no relation to it...
application is in early development stage and is not featured on the foursquare website. Users with Symbian
Symbian
Symbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...
phones and Pocket PCs (Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
touchscreen) can also use foursquare via Waze
Waze
Waze is a free GPS application featuring turn-by-turn navigation, developed by the Israeli start-up Waze Mobile for mobile phones. It currently supports iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and BlackBerry. Waze differs from traditional GPS navigation software as it is a community-driven...
, which is also available for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. Also, there's another application for Symbian users named "Sym4Square" is similar to the application for Android, BlackBerry and iPhone. Users may also use their mobile browsers to access foursquare mobile, but feature phone
Feature phone
A feature phone is a mobile phone that, like smartphones, combines the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone.Today's models typically also serve as portable media players and camera phones with touchscreen, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi and mobile broadband access.Feature phones is...
users must search for venues manually instead of using GPS
Global Positioning System
The Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites...
that PDA
Personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...
applications can use.
Foursquare Day
Foursquare DayFoursquare Day
Foursquare Day is a global social media holiday that was first observed on April 16, 2010 in hundreds of cities around the world...
(4sqDay) is a global event launched in 2010 in Tampa, FL. The event is held every April 16th (April being the 4th month and the 16th being equal to four squared). The official site is: 4sqday.com. Some cities have made official proclamations of April 16th being Foursquare Day (Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...
; Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
; Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
; Corpus Christi, Texas
Corpus Christi, Texas
Corpus Christi is a coastal city in the South Texas region of the U.S. state of Texas. The county seat of Nueces County, it also extends into Aransas, Kleberg, and San Patricio counties. The MSA population in 2008 was 416,376. The population was 305,215 at the 2010 census making it the...
; Gaithersburg, Maryland
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Gaithersburg is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. The city had a population of 59,933 at the 2010 census, making it the fourth largest incorporated city in the state, behind Baltimore, Frederick, and Rockville...
; Indianapolis, Indiana
Indianapolis, Indiana
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
; Kalamazoo, Michigan
Kalamazoo, Michigan
The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...
; Kennesaw, Georgia
Kennesaw, Georgia
Kennesaw is a city in Cobb County, Georgia, United States. It had a population of 29,783 according to the 2010 census. It is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Founded in 1887, Kennesaw has a past surrounded with railroad history...
; Manchester, New Hampshire
Manchester, New Hampshire
Manchester is the largest city in the U.S. state of New Hampshire, the tenth largest city in New England, and the largest city in northern New England, an area comprising the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It is in Hillsborough County along the banks of the Merrimack River, which...
; Miami, Florida
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
; New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
; Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Portsmouth is a city in Rockingham County, New Hampshire in the United States. It is the largest city but only the fourth-largest community in the county, with a population of 21,233 at the 2010 census...
; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
; Miami, Florida
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
; Victoria, Canada; Toronto, Canada; Ramat Hasharon, Israel
Ramat Hasharon
Ramat HaSharon is a city located on Israel's central coastal strip in the south of the Sharon region, bordering Tel Aviv to the south and Herzliya and Kibbutz Glil Yam to the north. It is part of the Tel Aviv District, within Gush Dan metropolitan area...
)
Foursquare 2.0
In September 2010 foursquare announced version 2.0 of its check-in app which helps to direct users to new locations and activities, rather than just sharing their location with friends. The list of personal list of places and activities, called to-dos, has been separated from the general advice from other users section called "tips". Foursquare has also created a button that will add any location in the app to a user's to-do list, and the app will now remind the user when there are to-do items nearby. Third party sites such as The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Wall Street Journal, and Zagat
Zagat Survey
Zagat Survey was established by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979 as a way to collect and correlate the ratings of restaurants by diners. For their first guide, covering New York City, the Zagats surveyed their friends. As of 2005, the Zagat Survey included 70 cities, with reviews based on the input of...
have added an "Add to My foursquare" button, which will add the location to the user's to-do list.
Foursquare 3.0
Foursquare 3.0 was released for Android and iPhone users on the evening of March 8, 2011.There exists a third party Windows Phone 7 client that implements these v3.0 features. As of July 4, 2011, the official foursquare application for Windows Phone 7 also has these features.
Foursquare 4.0
foursquare 4.0 was released for the iPhone on the morning of October 12, 2011 with other platform support coming soon. foursquare adds a new feature called "Radar". Radar is able to notify you, for example, when you’re close to a place that’s either on your to-do list or another list you follow or when three or more friends have checked in to a nearby venue. It’s powered by their Explore algorithm, so you’ll be sure to get notifications that are relevant to you.Funding
Foursquare is principally funded by Union Square VenturesUnion Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures is a venture capital firm based in New York City, New York, United States.The firm was founded by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham in 2004...
, Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company's headquarters is in Menlo Park, California.The venture capital fund was started in June 2009 with an initial capital of $300 million....
, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. The company raised $1.35 million in its Series A and $20 million in its Series B round.
On June 24, 2011 foursquare raised $50 million on a $600 million valuation.
Partnerships
In February 2010, the company entered into new commercial partnerships with Zagat, Bravo, Conde NastCondé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and several other firms to offer tips, specials and new badges to followers.
Foursquare acknowledged a grass-roots effort that started in Tampa, Florida
Tâmpa
Tâmpa may refer to several villages in Romania:* Tâmpa, a village in Băcia Commune, Hunedoara County* Tâmpa, a village in Miercurea Nirajului, Mureş County* Tâmpa, a mountain in Braşov city...
by declaring April 16 as a "Foursquare Day
Foursquare Day
Foursquare Day is a global social media holiday that was first observed on April 16, 2010 in hundreds of cities around the world...
".
Awards
- In 2010, foursquare was named a runner-up in the T3 Gadget Awards 2010 as the App of the Year.
- In August 2010, the company was a finalist in Lead411's New York CityNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
Hot 125. - In April 2010, foursquare received a Webby AwardWebby AwardsA Webby Award is an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile....
as one of the best mobile social networks. - In March 2010, foursquare was nominated for the 13th annual SXSW Web Awards in the Mobile Category.
- Foursquare was named a 2011 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic ForumWorld Economic ForumThe World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
in the Information Technologies and New Media category. - In January 2011, foursquare was named Best Location Based Service in the TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
Crunchies 2010.
Privacy
Posting personal status information to the internet creates privacy issues regarding how the information is obtained (active or passive), who can see the status, and how the information is used. This is an example of the broader topic of tracking online user behavior. See Internet privacyInternet privacy
Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, providing to third-parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Privacy can entail both Personally Identifying Information or non-PII information such as a...
.
In February 2010, a site known as Please Rob Me was launched. Please Rob Me scrapes data from public Twitter messages that have been pushed through foursquare. The purpose of the site is to raise awareness about revealing too much information.
In 2010, white hat hacker Jesper Andersen discovered a vulnerability
Vulnerability (computing)
In computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance.Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw...
on foursquare that raised privacy concerns. foursquare's location pages display a grid of 50 pictures that is generated randomly, regardless of their privacy settings. Whenever a user "checks-in" at that location, their picture is generated on that location page, even if they only want their friends to know where they are. Andersen then crafted a script that collected check-in information. It is estimated that Andersen collected around 875,000 check-ins. Andersen contacted foursquare about the vulnerability, and foursquare responded by fixing their privacy settings.
Also in 2010, issues arose for users who use Twitter to check in at locations, which are connected to Foursquare; specifically for those who have not disabled the option that shows when you are at a certain place – raising the issue of "who are you with" and "who are you not with" on foursquare. These users have no control whether or not someone else announces their location. An example of this problem would be:
Bob Smith checks in on foursquare and sends it to Twitter. “I am at Starbucks - Santa Clara (link to map)” shows up on Twitter. Jane Doe, friends with Bob Smith happens to check in at the same location seven hours earlier, but has not checked in anywhere else to update her history. “I am at Starbucks - Santa Clara (link to map) w/@JaneDoe” shows up in Bob’s tweets. This happens even if she personally chooses not to send her check-ins to Twitter.
This creates two problems. One, Jane's privacy is innocently compromised by Bob. Two, it appears that Jane is hanging out with Bob when in reality, she checked in hours ago while grabbing a quick latte. Also, if Bob ousts Jane as mayor of that particular Starbucks and has configured his settings to communicate his promotion to Twitter, his feed now sees Jane as someone who frequents that particular Starbucks. These privacy concerns can be avoided if people a) don’t connect their Twitter names to their foursquare profiles or b) don’t allow themselves to be listed as checked in at any particular place.
The US Federal Trade Commission
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
(FTC) is currently urging the White House to increase Internet privacy measures, especially for mobile devices and social networks, stating that federal laws have not kept up with the applications to ensure that personal information isn’t being improperly used.
Further discussion is currently going on with the FTC and the type of information that could be tracked online. According to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, said several companies such as Microsoft and Mozilla have done a good job of putting tools on their browsers to allow users to voluntarily opt out of being tracked on the Web. But he said that without “baseline privacy protections” across the Web industry, consumers will face a patchwork of privacy policies that could differ Web site by Web site. Also, “Do Not Track is no longer just a concept. It is becoming a reality,” Leibowitz said at the hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee. “An effective Do Not Track system would go beyond simply opting consumers out of receiving targeted advertisements. It would opt them out of having their behavior tracked online.” This can be an issue with the future of foursquare, as well as other social networking website devices that track users information.
In response to the privacy issues regarding social networking sites, foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai states that "Users decide if they want to push to Twitter or Facebook, over what information they want to share and send" and "There is a lot of misunderstanding about location based services. On foursquare, if you don’t want to people to know you are on a date or with a friend at a certain place, then you don’t have to let people know. You don’t check in." Selvadurai also states that foursquare does not passively track users, which means a user has to actively check in to let people know where they are. In the future, foursquare also does not plan on being a passive tracking, using GPS and other technology to constantly find location of users.
foursquare updated their privacy policy on Jan 12, 2011. It can be found on their website.
Lawsuit
Mobile Commerce Framework Inc filed a lawsuit against foursquare on March 10, 2011, for infringing on their US Patent No. (subscription-based system for providing commerce information).Similar concepts
A research project called "Factoid" of the former Digital Equipment CorporationDigital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
Western Research Laboratories (WRL), led by Bob Mayo had similar though, "hush" concept of gathering information. See
http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreport/Compaq-DEC/WRL-TN-60.pdf.