The "All New Foursquare" was launched 2 days ago- and the updates have been brilliant.
Foursquare has put themselves on a clear direction towards monetization - and beyond than that, it's an excellent path to revenue diversification.
Foursquare may have started off as a platform which was driven by gamification, but with their evolving product, they would be slowly but surely having the last laugh with respect to monetization.
In fact, Facebook could themselves a big favour, sit up, and take notice of Foursquare's makeover.
The Design should never overpower the Content
Foursquare's redesign is a welcome change from the cartoon-like feel before. More importantly, the design doesn't overpower the content- it's clean, simple, and faster. They've played up the user-generated visuals and lent more personality to their app.
But what about Facebook? Facebook has publicly admitted that they could be potentially hurt by the fact that they haven't quite successfully cracked the mobile market during their IPO-filing. Their core iOS app pre-IPO is buggy and not as robust as its desktop counterpart. It's clunkier- there have been steps taken recently to improve upon its visual presentation, but Facebook still has a long way to go.
To Facebook's credit, however, Camera had made bolder steps in design post-IPO, adopting a cleaner look and almost reminiscent of Google+'s iOS app, which was launched a few weeks before Camera launched.
Refined Data is King - Hyper targeted World of Mouth
Facebook has tons of user data- and in a certain way, they're already using some of that to trigger the word of mouth effect for its ads platform.
But what use is a mountain load worth of data when you can't maximise its effectiveness? Facebook's default search capabilities are extremely limited- social media monitoring services would have to be utilised to fully maximise any extraction of data from the platform. It doesn't provide one with useful recommendations we can actually use- more data-diarrhoea, less user pattern recognition.
When Facebook Places became a "social layer" instead of a standalone feature, I was looking forward to how they could potentially turn this into valuable information for their user base and really take advantage of the "World of Mouth" effect. Unfortunately, it didn't really pan out as well as I had hoped.
Which is why the All New Foursquare is interesting. Foursquare Explore itself has been around since March 2011. The smarter recommendations introduced days ago on its mobile platform is real time and based on the activity of the user using the app.
Building a Framework for Monetization
Foursquare is planning big changes for its merchant platform- including paid placements and targeted offers. As we know it, Facebook's revenue model is overly dependent on advertising - and they could certainly take a leaf out of Foursquare's book here. Foursquare is effectively building up its monetization framework into the mobile app - and it promises to be more relevant than pure advertising drivel to users.
Indeed, Foursquare's done a fantastic job with their new update. Plus, they've highlighted an important point- beyond the buzz and cacophony of social noise on Facebook, consumers won't just be looking at constantly sharing their own content.
Consumers want to discover, and start a "niche" form of sharing- trusted sharing from their friends.
Try out the new Foursquare app and judge its makeover for yourself.