POKEMON GO CRAZE RE-ENERGIZES INTEREST IN FOURSQUARE

App’s co-founders foresaw a future where location services power the world, and it’s finally unfolding

Foursquare, the discovery and checkin mobile app, was the talk of the town in tech circles half a dozen years ago when it led the way in the use of location-based services and the GPS technology built into the iPhone.

But over the years, Foursquare’s marquee check-in feature was adopted by apps such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Soon, the check-in was more a feature than a standalone product. Foursquare has since switched tactics several times, including moving toward a kind of real-world local search engine.

Now, location-based services and technology are the rage again. Poke

mon Go, the augmented reality mobile game sweeping several countries, uses location technology and fuses the real with the digital in a way akin to Foursquare’s check-ins. The game, finding and capturing virtual animals based on maps and real landmark data, has led people to begin exploring the physical world.

That may have re-energized interest in Foursquare: The company is seeing eight million check-ins per day, a new high, representatives said.

Dennis Crowley, co-founder and chairman of Foursquare, recently discussed the Pokemon Go phenomenon and how Foursquare was early to location-based services. The interview has been edited and condensed:

Pokemon Go seemed to take everyone by surprise. Did the fast uptake surprise you?

I thought it was interesting that it’s a location-based game. It’s really the first time since Foursquare came out in 2009 that a location-based game has captured pop culture’s attention.

I’ve been working in this space for a while. To see a lot of those ideas make it into Pokemon, I just sit back and think that it’s awesome.

Did Pokemon Go’s fast rise frustrate you at all? Another company nailed something quickly that you guys have been trying to do for years.

It’s the opposite of frustration. We started working on this stuff in graduate school, and now it’s exciting to see others pay attention. To see this succeed at this level, it’s validating for everyone playing in the locationbased gaming space for years. It’s a piece of software that changes people’s behaviour in the real world.

Have you seen any halo effects on Foursquare’s business?

We’ve been beating this drum for a while. Location services are going to power everything in the future. They’re going to be involved in everything we touch. One of the most interesting things is that it raises people’s awareness that the game board overlaps with the real world. Developers are saying, “How do we build the next Pokemon?” The wealth of data we’ve captured over six years, we can help be a part of that.

McDonald’s did a deal with Pokemon to make its restaurants available as special game locations. What does this mean for Foursquare’s business?

What happens with Pokemon is that people start realizing they can use it to advertise, a light bulb will go off and you’ll see far more of it.

It’s not just an ad, it’s a more creative ad. This is what ad agencies do — dream up crazy ideas.

Now we’re starting to have these conversations with them, saying: “We’ve built this thing. We can make something magical happen when you walk into a Starbucks, or a baseball stadium. If that’s something you want to build, that’s something Foursquare can power.”

How many stand-alone startups can really do this stuff?

It’s like a “count on one hand” type of thing. Google, Apple, Ingress data owned by Niantic. Our data set is 85 million places. We know latitude and longitude, but we also understand your relationship to where you’re positioned when you move in, out and around those places.

If Foursquare is in a strategically advantageous place after the explosion of Pokemon Go, does it make sense to be a stand-alone company? Would you field acquisition offers?

We have those conversations as they come, and frankly a few more have since Pokemon Go came out.

That said, Foursquare is a real business now. We’re in a good spot where we can continue to exist and do what we’re doing for the long haul.