Foursquare’s days are numbered…

Image via CrunchBase

 

I have said it once and I will say it again, Foursquare will not survive this year (yes, 2010). I know that anyone who loves Foursquare will completely disagree with me and they would probably be smart to do so given that there are only a couple of months left this year. However, beyond the outage that the blogger I am linking to below speaks about: 

• Remember Facebook Places?  Turns out that Facebook was granted a fairly broad patent covering Location-Based Social Networks And Checkins .  The announcement today means that they could effectively shut down Foursquare, GoWalla, and others that are in this space.
• Foursquare is still tiny.  As of the end of August they had reached 3 million users.  Even if we assume they have now grown to 4 million users, which I doubt, they are less than 1% of the size of Facebook.
• Foursquare still does not have its services business in order.  From personal experience I can tell you that as recently as September 27th I requested a Foursquare Special for CityCamp Boston, deciding to try to give Foursquare a shot for this event.  As of now (8+ days later) I can tell you I have not heard a single word (email, phone call, smoke signal, or carrier pigeon) from Foursquare.

Take my advice.  If you are not yet on Foursquare, don’t bother.

This post on their recent outage is to blame for me writing this anti-Foursquare post.  Please send all complaints to that author.  

 I’ve seen a lot of talk over the past couple of days about Foursquare being down and somehow that’s a big problem worthy of several news stories and blog posts.  Sure it’s a hot topic, so everyone is jumping onboard – but I propose that if Foursquare went away tomorrow, most people wouldn’t even notice (except the VC’s who funded the $21.4M for the startup). If you haven’t heard, Foursquare is a location-based application you download to your  … Read More 

via (Not so) Deep Thoughts 

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• Foursquare outage caused by rogue server (cnn.com)
• Foursquare outage still not explained (cnn.com)
• Foursquare explains yesterday’s downtime, launches new status website (thenextweb.com)

The infamous McDonald’s Foursquare Pilot

Image via Wikipedia

 

I came across a few post about McDonald’s recent experiments with Foursquare so I was curious to dig in and went straight to the source.  I know Rick Wion so I dropped him a note to see how he was doing and what the real story was from his perspective.  While I only know Rick informally I can tell you that, while Rick made a mistake in language when describing the pilot, it was accidental.  In trying to simplify Foursquare he gave the wrong impression leading to some very confusing data.     

However, his approach on this campaign can be learned from as a lot of great work was done that others can leverage.   

The Approach   

Foursquare, GoWalla, Scavngr, Facebook Places, and all the other geo-social applications are new technologies for marketers.  Heck, they are new technologies altogether.  Any organization beginning to use these solutions should take an iterative approach:   

• Learn if customers would benefit by doing a pilot, measuring check-ins. This is simple to setup and is a good starting point.
• If there is interest, setup a second pilot with a larger audience and measure revenue. Does the organization see sufficient return on their investment?
• If the metrics show value to customers and the organization than deploy fully.

As Rick told me the only goal for this first pilot was “…this was a pilot program to gauge how the foursquare community would react to our joining their community”.  Could it have been more?  Yes, but it was not intended to do more than that.   

The results   

McDonald’s achieved a 33% increase in check-ins on Foursquare Day, the day they ran this pilot.  Since the pilot the number of check-ins have increased above the previous average but have not returned to the number seen during the pilot itself.   

Revenue.  Rick could not give me an exact number but it’s fair to say that McDonald’s did not see a 33% increase in revenue, even from those checking in on Foursquare.  However, McDonald’s has seen revenues increase week over week throughout this entire year.  The real question in my mind, which cannot be answered for this pilot, is did they make a positive ROI, was the effort worthwhile?   

This was the first pilot, others will come and in those we will be able to better see if ROI was achieved.  The goals of this first pilot were clearly achieved, however, and I can’t wait to see the next round.  Rick, if you need help setting it up to measure the revenue returned, give me a call, as I know you’re on the right track.  Keep up the great work.   

Related Articles

• McDonald’s Actual Foursquare Test Numbers: 2,865 Check-Ins [Voices] (voices.allthingsd.com)
• Sorry, But McDonald’s Did Not See a 33% Increase in Foot Traffic Because of Foursquare (e1evation.com)
• The Real Story Behind McDonald’s Foursquare Campaign – (by @baekdal) (baekdal.com)
• Sorry, But McDonald’s Did Not See a 33% Increase in Foot Traffic Because of Foursquare (nytimes.com)
• Sorry, But McDonald’s Did Not See a 33% Increase in Foot Traffic Because of Foursquare (readwriteweb.com)
• McDonald’s Actual Foursquare Test Numbers: 2,865 Check-Ins (Christopher Heine/ClickZ) (techmeme.com)
• McDonald’s Foursquare Day Campaign Brought in 33% More Foot Traffic (seome.me)
• McDonald’s Foursquare Day Campaign Brought in 33% More Foot Traffic (mashable.com)
• Case Study: McDonald’s ups foot traffic 33% on Foursquare Day (econsultancy.com)
• McDonald’s social media chief: Foot traffic and check-ins are not the same (econsultancy.com)