david K dundas :: think. build. play.

5 lessons from the Facebook Places #fail

I can only imagine how gratifying yesterday’s announcement of Facebook’s retrenching around their location strategy was for Foursquare.  

Foursquare was announced DOA when Facebook announced one year ago that they were getting into the location game. 

1. Location requires a unique experience - Mark Zuckerberg said late last year that “Social was not a layer”. It turns out that neither is location. 
2. It says that Foursquare staying focused is working - They are rolling out deals and amazing new features on a weekly basis. They are not running the race against Facebook. They are running it against themselves.  
3. Your users are going to do what ever THEY want to do - Even with +700million users it was hard to get Places traction because training users that they should check in would have to replace a status update. This requires a pretty significant shift in how people use Facebook. 
4. Data is King - If you have used Foursquare’s API vs. Facebook’s API you know that Foursquare has a much more robust data set about location. 
5. We are still early in the location game - Location is still not done well, nor is it easy. This is the cornerstone of Foursquare’s business. Similar to how Facebook connect is the fabric of the social web, Foursquare will be the fabric of the real world. This will be huge for them. 

Kudos to the Foursquare for winning this round. Its what we do as entrepreneurs. We look at Goliath and say F-U try and stop me. Seriously - well played.