{"id":6561,"date":"2017-01-05T01:54:43","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T01:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/\/?p=6561"},"modified":"2017-01-05T01:54:43","modified_gmt":"2017-01-05T01:54:43","slug":"technology-is-swarm-safe-from-foursquares-demise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/01\/05\/technology-is-swarm-safe-from-foursquares-demise\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology: Is Swarm safe from Foursquare&#8217;s Demise?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:3626,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.crunchbase.com\\\/organization\\\/brightkite#\\\/entity&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20240927194916\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.crunchbase.com\\\/organization\\\/brightkite&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-04 04:49:12&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-11 06:55:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-17 11:41:29&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 11:12:20&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-09 11:22:32&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-14 00:08:52&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-23 02:21:37&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-23 02:21:37&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:3627,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/techcrunch.com\\\/2011\\\/12\\\/02\\\/report-facebook-has-acquired-gowalla&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20230316091929\\\/https:\\\/\\\/techcrunch.com\\\/2011\\\/12\\\/02\\\/report-facebook-has-acquired-gowalla\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-04 04:49:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-11 06:55:56&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-17 11:41:30&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 11:12:23&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-09 11:22:33&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-14 00:08:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 10:35:05&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 10:35:05&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:3628,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.crunchbase.com\\\/organization\\\/check-in#\\\/entity&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20240929010029\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.crunchbase.com\\\/organization\\\/check-in&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-04 04:49:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-11 06:55:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-17 11:41:29&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 11:12:20&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-09 11:22:32&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-14 00:08:52&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 10:35:04&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 10:35:04&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:3629,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.crunchbase.com\\\/organization\\\/foursquare#\\\/entity&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20250807003927\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.crunchbase.com\\\/organization\\\/foursquare&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-04 04:49:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-14 00:08:52&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 10:35:04&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-21 10:35:04&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Back when I joined in 2007 until today, Foursquare has been a utility. It is in essence indispensable. I believe in Check-In services so much that I even worked at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crunchbase.com\/organization\/brightkite#\/entity\">Brightkite<\/a> back in 2010 for a short sting before the service was closed mostly in part due to Foursquare\u2019s dominance and compounded when Facebook entered the game. <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2011\/12\/02\/report-facebook-has-acquired-gowalla\/\">Gowalla was acquired a year later<\/a> and closed completely in 2013. A side-note, before I left Brightkite, the founders created a web-app called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crunchbase.com\/organization\/check-in#\/entity\">Check.In<\/a>. It was awesome. The user could check-in to the locations on Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite at the same time. It was intended to make this a full-fledged smartphone application but it never occurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Looking at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crunchbase.com\/organization\/foursquare#\/entity\">Foursquare\u2019s Crunchbase page<\/a>, they have raised a ton of money even 45 million bucks only a year ago but with 100-200 employees, that sort of money goes fast. Of the 6 products on their company page, the only one I personally care about is Swarm. Foursquare (the app \/ site) is meant to compete with Yelp and I think they\u2019ve missed the mark in a big way. Swarm is still necessary to feed into the Foursquare data but there\u2019s no overlap between people who just want to check in and those looking for recommendations. Back when the check in &amp; the recommendation were in a single app, I had no issue looking for recommendations. Separately, I just use Yelp + Swarm. I know that Foursquare sells POI data to all kinds of companies. I\u2019m partly in the business of POI data and Foursquare\u2019s name comes up a bit in circles among companies that buy POI data but I don\u2019t think my employer uses their data and I\u2019m not on the POI team so I think I\u2019m okay to write an article like this.<\/p>\n<p>I actually do miss going to a new city and searching Pour-Over and seeing where my friends had been and their photos. Swam is simply a check-in Game w\/o those great features.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, Swarm for me isn\u2019t a social network. I check in, add a photo and the photo gets pushed to a Drop Box folder via IFTTT and synced to a Foursquare Google Calendar as well as the location data an XML \/ KML file. I use the data to plot where I go and have some historical record. I have thousands of checkins going back almost 10 years on the service.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What if Foursquare goes broke? What if their POI, Analysis, Marketing and Recommendation products go belly up and the Check-In aspect is simply discarded or worse, sold to a company who\u2019s ethics toward user data, advertising and marketing don\u2019t align with mine?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The thought of a life without Swarm is pretty rough. I don\u2019t know of any competing tools I could use to keep track of where I go. Any recommendations? Maybe I should start moving now because from what I can tell, Swam is at the bottom of Foursquare\u2019s priorities. There\u2019s little money in check-ins outside of potential data mining and I\u2019m not sure they\u2019re using that too its best potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back when I joined in 2007 until today, Foursquare has been a utility. It is in essence indispensable.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2017-01-05T01:54:48Z","apple_news_api_id":"4ea4ed9d-7d6f-48db-9265-51e0414b6815","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2017-01-05T01:54:48Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/ATqTtnX1vSNuSZVHgQUtoFQ","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-technology","7":"cs-entry","8":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-1HP","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1003,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/09\/06\/why-i-love-brightkite\/","url_meta":{"origin":6561,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 Why I Love Brightkite","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"September 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"As I stated in a post in late February announcing my joining Brightkite as a community manager, I could have applied to any location based social network in the world but I wanted to work at Brightkite. Here is one of the reasons why. This morning, I sampled the nearby\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Social Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Social Media","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/social-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Comparing Location Based Networks","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4087\/4964769926_faca9ca582_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":812,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/02\/25\/new-beginnings-part-1-a-new-job\/","url_meta":{"origin":6561,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 New Beginnings Part 1 &#8211; A New Job","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"February 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I've worked in many industries with some exceptional people. Since the age of 13, it's been work work work in nearly every aspect of my life. I built houses with my Dad, worked in a lumber yard and even got a commercial drivers license and trucked building supplies all over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Announcements&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Announcements","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/announcements\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.crunchbase.com\/assets\/images\/resized\/0001\/5798\/15798v4-max-250x250.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3332,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/12\/07\/goodbye-gowalla\/","url_meta":{"origin":6561,"position":2},"title":"\u2605 Goodbye Gowalla","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"December 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"via Gowalla's Blog (which is inconveniently hosted on Tumblr which goes down often and could go away one day so much for data longevity and this blog even being around 1 year from now): Gowalla, as a service, will be winding down at the end of January. We plan to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Rants&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.tumblr.com\/tumblr_lvlmbqecFS1qzo4wm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5114,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2015\/10\/19\/linked-foursquares-prediction-apple-will-sell-13-15-million-iphones-this-weekend\/","url_meta":{"origin":6561,"position":3},"title":"Linked: &#8220;Foursquare\u2019s Prediction: Apple Will Sell 13\u201315 Million iPhones This Weekend&#8221;","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"October 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Via FourSquare Blog on Medium: The dataset is very compelling\u200a\u2014\u200aover six years of data about the places people go every day\u200a\u2014\u200aincluding more than 7 billion check-ins at over 65 million places. We have an additional level of insight through our Pilgrim technology, which gives us information beyond active check-ins. Using\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":937,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/08\/16\/bring-ca-to-nh-from-a-tech-perspective\/","url_meta":{"origin":6561,"position":4},"title":"\u2605 Bring CA to NH (From a Tech Perspective)","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"First of all, thank you to EVERYONE for the overflowing of advice, encouragement and well-wishes. I'm happy to report I only had one anonymous comment saying, \"guess you just couldn't survive in the big city. glad to see you go. We can go back to having fun. Fuck you.\" When\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3956,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2013\/07\/16\/linked-the-gowalla-story\/","url_meta":{"origin":6561,"position":5},"title":"\u2605 Linked: The Gowalla Story","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"via Medium: Listen to your users more than the press. Don\u2019t get sucked into the gravity hole between you and your competition. Ruthlessly run your own path, not someone else\u2019s. Great article from Josh Williams, founder of Gowalla and currently at Facebook. I loved Gowalla. 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