Foursquare Direct is the company's Medium publication, using location and foot-traffic data to analyze companies, sales and events.
HN links it for Foursquare's foot-traffic predictions of Chipotle and iPhone sales, which commenters use to discuss what large location data holders can infer.
Foursquare (https://foursquare.com/jobs)| New York, NY and San Francisco, CA | ONSITE only
We make the Foursquare and Swarm apps. Foursquare is a place recommendation engine with worldwide coverage. Swarm is an app for checking in to places you go to share with friends, life log, get perks and win prizes, or just for quirky fun.
Built on the foundation of our apps, we also have suite of location intelligence products. Our venue database powers products by Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Samsung, Twitter and more.
We're hiring for a variety of positions in NYC and SF:
- Infrastructure Engineers - distributed systems in Scala and Go
- Ad Tech Engineers - real time bidding at 100k QPS. Ad effectiveness measurement based on Foursquare/Swarm place visits
- Android/iOS Engineers - Foursquare and Swarm apps
In the news lately:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/foursquare-10-puts-search-front-and-center/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/marvel-dc-real-difference-between-933657
https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/how-the-trump-presidential-campaign-is-affecting-trump-businesses-c343178e3c03#.wxq6t8ija
https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/25/uber-taps-foursquares-places-data-so-you-never-have-to-type-an-address-again/
More job details and application form here: https://foursquare.com/jobs
Interview process for most roles is recruiter phone convo, take home test, on-site. Read more here:…
It will be a huge loss (not monetary) for a lot of people if foursquare closed the shop.
Their database is pretty much unbeatable when you want to search for meaningful places - a.k.a places people actually go to.
In addition, that database can be used for accurate analysis of different vectors, like product sales predictions[1].
It really seems like they waited too long to monetize, and unfortunately decided to go all-in on the social & gamified route. The problem is that even some Xcorp buys them, it's only a matter of (short) time until all that data will be practically stale, and getting people into the check-in frenzy will be difficult.
EDIT: With that being said, I'm glad they're at least taking a down-round since it means them, and investors, actually believe they can turn things around.
[1] https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/right-on-target-foursquare-accurately-predicts-iphone-sales-4140c450a396
It's very disappointing. I wrote a fun app for my friends which would find the nearest bar serving picklebacks in New York City on top of Foursquare. These API changes effectively killed it.
This is the same company that regularly hosts hackathons and talks about wanting "to inspire young developers to dream up the next generation of amazing products and services, and provide them with the tools to make them a reality."[1]
How about if you want to do that, don't take your users data and hold it hostage to developers who want to provide them a free service?
[1] https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-x-la-hacks-great-minds-build-alike-edcc5f9bda5a
The US destined travel is down since October and the trend downwards is consistent. Square who should have fairly up-to-date stats recently published their stats: https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/coming-to-america-528312934221
At one point these trends will be impacting main street but by then it will be too late.
Well, foursquare is already using foot traffic to predict retail sales right now.
https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-predicts-chipotle-s-q1-sales-down-nearly-30-foot-traffic-reveals-the-start-of-a-mixed-78515b2389af#.1c21c9lre
If Foursquare can do this imagine what Google, Apple, or facebook can do.
https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-predicts-chipotle-s-q1-sales-down-nearly-30-foot-traffic-reveals-the-start-of-a-mixed-78515b2389af#.lqsjmrf79