An interview with Foursquare co-founder, Dennis Crowley
Get Facebook, Twitter, gaming and location, mix it all together, throw in a smartphone and you´ll get something very similar to Foursquare.
Foursquare is today´s hottest social network and it´s growing fast. Already 1,5 million registered users in just a year, and adding 50% more each month, according to co-founder Dennis Crowley.
I had the chance of interviewing Dennis recently. We spoke for an hour and he shared some great ideas on how he´s planning to develop and transform Foursquare in the next months. The full interview was published today in EL PAÍS (Spanish).
Key takeaways?
- He thinks Foursquare could reach 10 million users by the end of 2010. My take? They will make it. The question is: will they maintain double-digit growth in 2011, once the novelty effect is over?
- Dennis admits the gaming layer (yes, the mayorships, the badges, the annoying Twitter messages…) might be putting off some new and existing users. They want to change that. My take? Do it soon, or Foursquare will vanish. At least in the web (not in the mobile app), I think it´s closer to be perceived as a dumb Zynga game rather than a value added service.
- He believes the future of Foursquare is becoming more of a discovery and recommendation-type engine and not just a fun social network. My take? Definitely. I´ve been playing with the Foursquare iPhone app for a while, and that´s where the real value lies. Not in telling your friends you are the mayor of a pet shop…
You can read the nitty-gritty of the interview in EL PAÍS. Below are some additional questions we didn´t have room to include. Dennis will be in Spain in June, attending the HiT Barcelona event. By then, the mistery of the sale or the additional funding will be probably solved:
QUESTION: Do you see Foursquare as a social network in itself or more as a functionality within an established social network?
ANSWER: I used to think that we could piggy-back off someone else’s social graph, from all your Twitter and Facebook friends. But we are finding that Foursquare´s social graph is different. It is about sharing very personal pieces of information. And that tends to be something people want to be a bit tight about who they share it with.
Q: A lot of Facebook and Twitter users don´t like seeing location messages from Foursquare in their timelines. They complain about it. Does it worry you?
A: Wee see that from some users. But it´s ultimately the user decision if they want to do that or not. We ask them to opt it or not. Some people turn it off, some turn it on. If we were forcing users to do it, it would be a different issue. But everything that we do is about opt in: share as much or as little as you want. We see people pushing stuff on Twitter and if their friends complain about it, they turn it off. It´s a very personal thing.
Q: But one of the reasons you are growing so much is because the Facebook and Twitter effect. If we don´t link these services, don´t you think your growth will be affected?
A: Yes, I think so, but that´s just a tiny part of what´s pushing us. Twitter and Facebook are great as an advertising-type service. But we find a lot of our users come from word of mouth. We see people using this in bars, restaurants, movie theatres, and that´s how people spread the word to other users.
Q: What new functionalities are you planning to add in the next months?
A: The priority is taking the data that we have and playing 
it back to users. People are giving us a nugget or two of data every day: the coffee shop they go, where they have breakfast, the park they go… What we´ll do is to look at this data, analyze it, and suggest new things to do based on their preferences.
Q: The gaming part, earning the badges, the mayorships… all of that is now a central part of Foursquare. Is this where you want to go moving forward?
A: The scoring system is not exactly what we want it to be, and we are revisiting a lot of the stuff. We realize that people can get tired of the gaming system and the badges. That´s part of what we are working on. We need to make the Foursquare experience fresh. As a game, is not a great one, it gets boring after three months or so. But what we need to work on are things like social recommendations, helping you figure out where you should be going next and people you should be meeting up with. It´s about helping you expose interesting parts of a city.
Q: A sort of interactive city guide made by friends…
A: Yes, my career has been focused on working with city guide-type products. They are about how you make a city easy and interesting to explore. We are on that path.
Q: But, still, you are in a very niche market of young, technology savvy, smartphone owners. Do you see this as an obstacle?
A: It could be, but that´s what people thought about Facebook and Twitter. These companies have busted against these roadblocks over and over again. People said “no one is going to share their status update”, and now you have 125 million in the world doing it; “why would you put photos online”… people have been asking the same questions for years, and eventually there´s a breakthrough company that convinces people that is important to do it.
Q: So you think you could be the next Facebook or Twitter.
A: I can see a world where Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare coexist. We are all doing slightly different things. But we have a long way to get there. We are just over a million users. If we keep our growth, we´ll more than double that every two months.
Q: Location based services are a big opportunity in mobile marketing, but still most of the companies in this space don´t make any money. Why?
A: The space is very new. Does Facebook turn a profit? They might do it this year. Does Twitter turn a profit? Not yet. This is a classic thing. You take you best stab at starting a company and you hope at some point there´s some way to monetize it while still preserving what makes the product great.
Foto 1: Carlo de Marchis
Foto 2: James Duncan Davidson
Internet, ese demonio
Regresamos con una foto, la de la izquierda.
Corresponde a la portada del Daily Mail del pasado miércoles día 10… y ya veo la luz que se os acaba de encender: “tabloide, peligro”.
El Daily Mail es el segundo periódico más vendido en Reino Unido (2 millones de tirada diaria), por detrás de The Sun. Es lo que se llama un “tabloide intermedio”: mitad noticias “serias”, mitad basura.
Llegó a mis manos en un vuelo de British Airways (sí, Mr BA da *sólo* tabloides a sus pasajeros…). El titular a toda página le deja a uno temblando: “Facebook bajo ataque”
El artículo lo podéis leer aquí, pero os ahorro el trauma con este breve resumen.
Según el Daily Mail, Facebook en un nido de pedófilos en busca de presas. Recientemente, una adolescente británica fue captada y asesinada por un lunático que contactó con ella vía Facebook. Desde entonces, hay una cruzada contra la web.
En la pieza del Mail, un “experto criminólogo” escribía un texto de apoyo titulado, “I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you“.
Lo que seguía explicaba cómo se hizo pasar por una adolescente en la red social. “Pasaron 90 segundos”, dice, “cuando un extraño ya me había hecho propuestas sexuales de todo tipo”.
Temazo, dirían los del Mail. Si no fuera porque el artículo del “experto” resultó ser falso. El criminólogo nunca había entrado en Facebook y ésta se plantea ahora demandar al Mail. El tabloide se ha disculpado. Pero la presión sigue.
El Ministerio de Interior británico quiere que la web instale el llamado “panic button“: cada vez que un adolescente crea encontrarse ante un agresor sexual al otro lado de la pantalla, clic, le da al botoncito y recibe asistencia inmediata de un experto o incluso la policía.
La historia es surrealista. La seguridad de los menores es crucial. El “panic button” no es descabellado. Pero imaginemos por un segundo que los lunáticos contactaran por teléfono a sus víctimas. O les escribieran cartas de puño y letra. ¿Criminalizaría alguien al “teléfono”? ¿Cargaría el Daily Mail contra el servicio de correo británico, el Royal Mail? Sería absurdo.
¿Por qué la sociedad, de la que los medios son altavoces, criminaliza entonces Internet y las redes sociales? La respuesta está en parte, creo, en los llamados “tecnology scares“, los “miedos a la tecnología”, al avance, a la incertidumbre del progreso.
Al leer el artículo del Mail, me acordé de otro realmente bueno que os recomiendo y que explica muy bien esta teoría. Estrito por el psiquiatra Vaughan Bell, colaborador de Wired UK, recorre la historia de los technology scares aplicados a los medios de comunicación. Unas muestras:
- En 1565, el científico suizo Conrad Gessner advirtió de los problemas que traería la imprenta, “una inundacion de información que sería perjudicial para la mente”, dijo.
- El estadista francés Malesherbes advirtió que las páginas impresas aislarían socialmente a las personas, al no obtener las noticias en la plaza del pueblo leídas en alto, como antes.
- Cuando la radio llegó, se le acusó de causar distracción y problemas escolares a los niños…
¿Suena familiar? Podríamos encontrar un “miedo” asociado a casi cualquier avance tecnológico, desde la invención de la rueda al ferrocarril.
Ahora le toca a Internet, el nuevo demonio. Un filón para los medios de “usar y tirar”.
Para más disfrute, no os perdáis el artículo de Bell.
El futuro es móvil
Muy recomeadable la presentación de Morgan Stanley en el pasado Web 2.0 Summit de San Francisco.
Este año el hilo conductor ha sido Internet móvil y su enorme potencial de crecimiento, con datos que indican el camino: en Japón, el 65% de la gente ya accede a sus redes sociales favoritas a través del móvil.
Las slides más jugosas, a partir de la nº 29.
Twitter crece en España el 1591% en un año
Según datos de comScore, Twitter registró en Mayo del 2008 algo menos de 35.000 visitantes únicos en España. Un año después, supera ya los 589.000, un crecimiento del 1591%. No hay datos de Junio confirmados, pero dada la tendencia, superará con creces los 700k usuarios únicos en Julio.
Empezando de la nada no es difícil registrar tal nivel de crecimiento. Pero lo interesante es cuando se compara con otros servicios complementarios dirigidos a audiencias similares. Twitter superó en abril a LinkedIn, una red social profesional con mucho más camino labrado previamente. La diferencia el pasado Mayo superó los 300.000 usuarios únicos entre ambas webs.
Eso sí, hay que relativizar. LinkedIn es una red que da beneficios desde abril del 2008 y Twitter, con suerte, empezará a ver sus primeros ingresos este trimestre ($400.000). Si en la ecuación incluimos el tráfico de Facebook y Tuenti en España durante el último año, las diferencias son abismales.
De todas formas, las cifras de visitantes únicos mensuales sólo indican una tendencia general. Para saber qué se cuece entre líneas, es bueno analizar los datos de engagement (tiempo medio de permanencia por visita, páginas vistas…). Adrián Segovia tiene acceso a esos datos de Nielsen y los comenta en este otro post muy completo.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn CEO: “The separation of personal and professional profiles will persist”
Reid Hoffman is known to be “the most connected man in Silicon Valley”. Why? His professional profile gives some hints.
CEO and founder of LinkedIn in 2007, member of the board of directors of +10 technology firms (Zynga, Six Apart, Kiva…) and angel investor of +60 other companies like Facebook, Flickr or Digg. Few Silicon Valley execs can match that record.
LinkedIn growth is impressive: 42 million members, adding 1,7 million every 17 days. Approximately, one per second.
I had the chance of interviewing Reid Hoffman recently. The result of our conversation was published last week in El País (spanish). There were a lot of additional interesting details in our talk that I include in the following full English version.
Q. How many contacts does the “most connected man in Silicon Valley” have in LinkedIn?
A. I have 1.824 contacts exactly in LinkedIn, but my identity is not based in being connected. My identity is being a start-up CEO, an angel investor and an internet entrepreneur.
Q. You are in the board of directors of 10 technology firms, and invested in Facebook, Digg, Flickr… clearly, you didn´t need founding LinkedIn. Why did you decide to do so?
A. I saw a convergence of two trends. One was how work was changing. Now every individual is much more like a small business. People work in various companies various years, and then they need tools to work as a business on their own. I realized the Internet could provide. The other trend was that as a senior professional, part of what you do is use your network, you bring resources together to solve a problem, and that includes people, experts, information… With the convergence of these two trends, I thought LinkedIn would be an ideal tool to help professional from 22 to 65 years old.
Q. LinkedIn has achieved enormous growth over the last two years. Where you expecting this response?
A. To be honest, yes. In the fall of 2002 I decided to invest in things I thought were part of entertainment on the web and spend my live on how to help people professionally. I anticipated that, and I´m pleased with the result. We are today over 42 million subscribers globally, and growing about 1,7 million every 17 days or so.
Q. However, it´ll be difficult to maintain that growth indefinitely.
A. We have a lot of headroom. Our definition of professionals is people who improve week by week in how they do their job. They way we target our services is essentially to people who have a carrer and can progress. So that´s pretty much everyone. We think that roughly in between 20% and 25% of the worldwide population can benefit from LinkedIn. So there´s a long way to go.
Q. Only 25% of total registered users come from Europe. What obstacles are you finding here?
A. We have a lot of activity in Europe. For example, The Netherlands has the highest per-capita membership globally. Even the Prime Minister of The Netherlands is an active member. In absolute numbers, we have over 10 million people in Europe and we are adding 500.000 a month. That´s a strong performance.
Q. Do you feel LinkedIn is viewed in Europe more as a US professional network rather than a global or European service? Is that holding back your growth here?
A. I think we have the strongest brand in Europe because we are in all the countries. In markets like Germany, Xing is bigger than us there, but we are growing faster in Spain. Since we are we are global rather than German, we find that many more Spanish citizens are opting for LinkedIn. Since we launched in Spain, we´ve seen there an increase of 80% in membership.
Q. Are you benefiting from the current economic recession and rise of unemployment?
A. We are finding that usage increases as people want to take control of their own economic destiny. Also because a massive amount of the site is free, and they see the value of it because it helps them with their professional career, whether it’s finding opportunities or staying informed and connected.
Q. The average salary of LinkedIn members is a bit over 100.000$. Do you want to continue being a network for the elite?
A. We don´t try to program who uses it. It just happens that a lot of the people who find the value of it are very successful people, they tend to be early adopters. But we have everything from execs in all Fortune 500 companies to recent graduates. The reason why all of them use it is because they control who they are connected to and because they are all in the same network. If I´m an exec, I might consider hiring a recent graduate, or a PA, and the network would help me with that transaction.
Q. However, some well-known execs don´t use it. Bill Gates only has 5 connections.
A. Well, as you get to the “over-wealthy, have a complete staff around me” point, you just have a large number of people that you use as a personal army. But most of us don´t have the economics to do that (laughing).
Q. LinkedIn started more as a peer to peer professional network, but it´s more and more becoming a B2B/B2C recruiting tool. Is this they way it´s heading?
A. True, we started as a P2P tool and that´s still a strong component. But as we get larger, a bunch of different functions spike ahead of the general growth curve. One of the things that came up was that this should be the new way everyone should be doing recruiting into their company. We do have a strong growth in the use of it as a job seeking and recruiting tool, but we also see a lot of growth in many other business functions.
Q. Facebook is more and more being used as a professional network, to build contacts. Are they a potential competitor in the near future?
A. Just having a list of people you are connected to, doesn’t make something competitive. It´s really what you do with the people you are connected to what makes the difference. Over half of Facebook users do photo-sharing. Another 25% do social games. The trajectory of Facebook is not towards something that we would consider a competitor.
Q. Do you think Facebook could become an umbrella service under which professional networking, and many other types of networking, could take place?
A. There are reasons why social and professional lives are kept somewhat distinct. You meet people in conferences and you don´t show them pictures of your kids. You don´t invite all your work colleagues to your home. I think it´s best to have those types of activities under completely different brands and networks.
Q. So you don´t think Facebook would be interested in acquiring LinkedIn…
A. (Laughing). Let´s put it this way: it is extremely unlikely that I would think it was a good idea. But the Internet landscape changes every couple of years. So if you told me that a telephone company is going to acquire us, I would say “well, I think it´s very unlikely”. There are so many possibilities that I would never go “absolutely never, never, never, never”.
Q. The reason I ask is because the line between personal and professional in the Internet seems to be blurring more and more… Do you believe people will still have in the future separate personal and professional profiles online?
A. Yes, I think so. A personal profile tends to be things like, if I´m single, here´s why I´m a really attractive person to date, here´s why I´m a lot of fun. If I´m married with kids, here are my pictures with kids… this kind of stuff.
The question is, if I want to talk to you for professional reasons, and I look at your profile, do you want me to find the fact that you really like salsa dancing and all the pictures of you doing salsa dancing? Or do you want me to find your professional identity? It´s never been that social and professional was 100% divided, but that separation will persist.
Q. You´ve raised 100 million dollars in cash. That´s a lot of money for potential acquisitions. What are your thoughts here?
A. We´ve only spent 15 million. We did actually raise the money in order to do acquisitions. We are looking to interesting technology companies that would bring a lot of value.
Q. Don´t you think Xing in Europe could be a great target for you?
A. We´ve been a bit skeptical of the “networks-spying-networks”. I wouldn´t say never, but the companies have never engaged in such conversations.
Q. LinkedIn is profitable since April 2008. Have you managed to find the right business model for professional networks?
A. I think it is absolutely working for us. We have three principal revenue lines: one is people subscribing at the website to get enhanced functionality; another one is corporations purchasing LinkedIn Recruiter, which is a software package; and advertising.
Q. Why is it working then so horribly bad for personal social networks?
A. Most social networks are only dependant on consumer oriented advertising. In LinkedIn, people subscribe to make themselves professionally effective. Corporations are trying to solve talent management problems and hiring. We have a very aspirational and elite audience, which can be targeted well. But in social networks, you have tons of pages without clear business model and segmented audiences behind.
Q. People seem to get tired very fast of socializing online in Facebook, click-through rates in advertising are really low… Do you think social networking is becoming a commodity?
A. One way of dividing what sites are trying to do is either spending time, so entertainment, or saving time, so being more productive. If people get overly entrenched in spending too much time online they´ll get fatigue, and there´ll be a problem. What we are trying to do is making you effective, instead of spending your time.
Q. So I guess you don´t spend much time in Facebook, do you?
A. I have an account. My friends post pictures there and I take a look at them. But I don´t have a lot of time myself to play games, although I think it´s a great platform. I´m also connected to Mark [Zuckerberg] on LinkedIn (laughing).
Photo 1: Dave Getzschman; Photo 2: Joi
Interview with Marko Ahtisaari, CEO De Dopplr
I recently met with Marko Ahtisaari, CEO of Dopplr, one of the jewels in social media and travelling.
We had initially scheduled a 30 minutes interview. We ended up talking for well over an hour. One of the most interesting chats I had in months.
I was really surprised with Marko´s view on some topics. As I wrote in the article published this week, he´s a countercurrent man, in a counter current start-up. Two proofs:
“The kind of thinking of “sorry, I can´t talk to you now, I have to tweet this”. What´s that?! Let the technology get out of the way, please!”
“We are about letting people meet all over the world through the site, having dinner, and that´s it. You don´t have to fucking check Dopplr all the time! Does this pass the Larry Page toothbrush test? – meaning that entrepreneurs should aim to create apps that people use at least two or three times a day, like a toothbrush – Well, that´s the challenge”
Here ´s an excerpt with some of the highlights of the interview:
Question: You background is not the typical one of an Internet entrepreneur… degree in philosophy and music, lecturer at Columbia University, professional musician… do you feel an outsider in the Internet world?
Answer: No, I think everyone has their own path. While at Columbia, universities where the early adopters of the Internet. It was the time when everybody got their firsts email address. It was also early days in digitization of music. There are different types of entrepreneurship models, and I followed mine.
Q: You founded Dopplr with four other people: Matt Biddulph, Lisa Sounio, Dan Gillmor and Matt Jones? Did you all feel lonely in hotels around the world?
A: Yes, we were trying to keep track of each other. We thought: could we replace the evening alone in a hotel room typing in Facebook with meeting someone for dinner? I was also getting emails all the time asking me “when will you be there?”, “when we will meet next?”… Originally, it was really as a tool for ourselves.
Q: Dopplr has been successful among hardcore corporate travelers… but not casual travelers, tourists… was that the initial intention?
A: I think so. When we launched it, it was very minimalist. When people came to the site, all we said was: “if you travel more than five times a year and you know people that do as well, this may be for you”. We encouraged heavy travelers to try it. Today, 80% of the people using Dopplr travel for work, 20% for leisure.
Now it´s not only about where people will be, but marking the places that you visit, the restaurants, a local bookstore, a swimming pool, whatever.
Q: A lot of people like Dopplr because it´s more intimate and private than Facebook, it´s a more select club… was that the key for getting visibility?
A: I think so, we designed it to be private and polite. We used to call it a “beautility”, a beautiful utility. Quality and elegance plus privacy and politeness. In that sense, it is a very European social media.
Q: Dopplr face two big hurdles as a start-up: a deep economic crisis and being in the Facebook era. It must be very tough to convince people to use yet again another social network.
A: We are progressing very well. We have 150.000 registered accounts, growing about 34% unique users month-on-month. It´s not huge, but we focus on quality audience. Think of the readership of the Economist, 1,5 million people. That´s a good goal for us. Our users do an average of 15 trips a year, and they enter up to 75% of them in the system.
Q: There must be something we don´t know about Dopplr to have received investment from heavy-weights such as like Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters, or Martin Varsavsky, CEO of FON… Tell us the secret.
A: (He smiles suspiciously) They were just users of the service. And there is an interest in a business based on the data and travel of a certain community. Travel advice in the Internet is done now trough large anonymous reviews, like Tripadvisor. You have 1.000 reviews but maybe you check just some of them. We want to modernize that.
Q: Who gives you better advice, Hoffman or Varsavsky?
A: (Again, he first laughs, but then thinks very seriously for 30 seconds) Different advice. Silicon Valley social networks expertise versus passion for product and ramping up a business.
Q: Did they invest in Dopplr maybe because you found the trick to make money out of socializing online? Transactions instead of advertising?
A: It´s way too early to say. But the game is definitely about transactions and subscriptions. For our audience advertising is not the right model. And for Facebook-type audiences, the numbers speak for themselves.
Q: The way in which people socialize online is changing very rapidly. A year ago, Facebook seemed to be a revolution and now is losing ground to services like Twitter.
A: We are not in that real time pulse of the world, Dopplr has always been about slower travel. We are against the grain here. The kind of thinking of “sorry, I can´t talk to you now, I have to tweet this”. What´s that?! Let the technology get out of the way, please!.
“We are about letting people meet all over the world through the site, having dinner, and that´s it. You don´t have to fucking check Dopplr all the time! Does that pass the Larry Page toothbrush test?, which is that Google only look for things that are used as frequently as a toothbrush, with is at least 2 times a day. Well, that´s the challenge.
Q: Is microblogging, or real-time communications, the future of socializing online?
A: If you mean that only “status-like” companies will survive, I don´t believe that. What people do on Facebook are lightweight interactions. There´s always a counter current, private, and high quality, and that´s where we play. We don´t use the word “friend” we just say that you share your data with someone. It´s purely information. Many Americans tell me: “what you do is fake following”. What the hell is fake following, please?!
El doble rasero de Facebook: la mafia hace amigos
Gestionar una red social con casi 200 millones de usuarios únicos en el mundo no es fácil.
Pero Facebook debería dar un buen repaso a su política de gestión de contenidos que puedan atentar contra principios éticos básicos.
Recientemente, los responsables de la red decidieron eliminar fotos de madres amamantando a sus hijos por considerar que podían ser obscenas. No es la primera vez.
Lo llevan haciendo de forma aleatoria desde el 2007, cuando eliminaron una foto de este tipo colgada por una madre llamada Kelli Roman. Perpleja por la decisión, Roman decidió crear el grupo “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!“. Ya tiene 114.300 miembros que protestan por una decisión tan retrógrada como absurda.
Hoy me entero que simpatizantes de la mafia italiana mantienen grupos en Facebook en apoyo de tipos como Bernardo Provenzano, ex-jefe de la Costa Nostra, arrestado en el 2006 en una granja de Sicilia. Algunos de sus “fans” piden, por ejemplo, la inmediata beatificación del que fuera el delincuente más buscado de Italia.
También hay grupos de fans de Salvatore Riina, anterior capo de la Cosa Nostra, arrestado en 1993 en Palermo. Algunos incluso utilizan Facebook para desearle Feliz Navidad.
¿Cómo puede ser esto posible? ¿Cuándo va a tener Facebook una política ética definida e implementada de forma coherente?
