[Foursquare] Social media: forever in the dating phase

Location-based apps monthly traffic

What is the traffic in monthly unique visitors of the most talked about location-based mobile and web sites Brightkite, Gowalla, Foursquare, loopt? And newly Check.in, the mobile web app, which Techcrunch positioned as the remedy to checkin fatique?  Here is a quick draft from February 2010 from Compete.com (US only) data that gives a quick portray of forces in action here. Foursquare has seen a big jump in February 2010.  Smells like the start of critical mass adoption?  It is funny how Spring ignites social messaging services, see Twitter: le grand bond du printemps blog post which highlights the February 2007 Twitter jump in Statistics, just the way Foursquare has seemed to be “jumping”  in February 2010.  Is that a pattern?

As we speak, Foursquare has now been valued around $50M to $70M by four Venture Capital investors, cited in Techcrunch and Social Media Today.  Only speculations? Probably.

In terms of growth for those who like the numbers.  Here are some statistics of the top sites right now in terms of location based services. Please let me know if I am missing in the top 5 .  Foursquare currently reigns with a growth of  95%. While testing a few others like plantcast, Check.in did not show up with enough data.  Techcrunch has “claimed” Check.in as the solution to the numerous location -based sites popping up all over the web and the mobile apps world. Only time will tell.  Just as the dating scene: stick to it and at some point something  positive will come up.  I am wondering if members will actually adhere to check.in and adopt it, and will it just stay a “great tool”…

UPDATED : You can see Hitwise Intelligence’s foursquare growth  March 12, 2010 data analysis.

It’s all about the papers?

“It’s about looking beyond the check-in,” said Josh Williams, chief executive of Gowalla. “The gross marginal value of checking in will go down over time” unless people keep finding new reasons to check in.

Rather than viewing location broadcasts as compromising one’s privacy, millions of users are happy to constantly apprise the world of where they are – provided there is something in it for them, the panelists said.  Most of the companies monetize by getting local businesses to participate. A taco truck at South By Southwest, for example, was persuaded by Gowalla to offer free tacos to the people who checked in at the truck the most often.

“For every free taco they gave out, they sold ten,” Williams said.

For those who like talking about social media ROI and numbers, there was your number.  The Where 2.0 panelists positioned the act of “checkin in” as a social based platform of its own, orchestrated around the checkin “interaction with the friends’ network” vs a basic standalone feature.  It is a new social interaction. It is a whole, not a feature.

There were talks about social networking fatigue, checkin fatique by the Wall Street Journal. The location-based social war acts as a Facebook challenger now, the way last year’s Twitter .   I like that Malcolm Gladwell states that:

The problem is, we’re still in the experimental phase. The thing about Facebook is, it’s insanely new. This world of the Internet, if we know anything from its brief history, it likes nothing more than to build someone up only to topple them. Who has an AOL account these days?  Not that long ago, AOL was the single most powerful player on the Internet. Who has a MySpace account these days? MySpace sold for billions of dollars not that long ago. I’m very reluctant to crown Facebook king of the future. They certainly are flavour of the month. This is not a world that respects loyalties and longevity.

Indeed, we are in an experimental phase with Social Media, like a modern single hottie constantly on the dating scene. Talk about Déjà vu?

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