Swarm recently released version 5.0 of its mobile app. Blog post here. Instead of gamification (leaderboards and so on), the emphasis is now on lifelogging – a more personal collection of all the places you’ve been.
Here’s what that looks like:
The most notable change is a front and center map that shows you all of your check-ins. You can also zoom in and really explore where you’ve been, geographically. Swarm refers to it as a “virtual memory book.”
Lifelogging is absolutely the main reason why I use Swarm and why it still finds itself on my home screen. One of the reasons I enjoy blogging is that it’s a public diary. Swarm is a modified version of that for me. So this change feels right.
My other Swarm use cases are being able to share check-ins to Twitter and serendipitous encounters with friends.
But the more I use Swarm the more I think that divorcing this use case from Foursquare (this happened in 2014) was a mistake. If Swarm is now about lifelogging (instead of just playful check-ins) and if Foursquare is about finding the perfect place to go out, then why not merge these experiences?
Tell me where I should be going, let me make lists of places I want to go, and then let me log it to my diary along with tips for other people.
At the time of the divorce, the data seemed to suggest that very few people did both of these things within the consolidated app. People either checked-in or they looked for a place to go. Rarely did they do both.
Perhaps that would be different with lifelogging.
Last year, social media company Foursquare predicted that Chipotle would see a ~30% drop in its Q1 2016 sales. It knew this because the geo-location data from people using its app (check-ins and passive visits) was also down. They had figured out the relationship between foot traffic and sales. I think I wrote about this in the first half of last of year.
Not surprisingly, lots of companies – including those on Wall Street – are now starting to pay attention to data sets such as these. Matt Turck wrote a great blog post about it this morning, called: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants your Data. Here’s an excerpt:
That a social media company could be building a data asset of immense value to Wall Street is part of an accelerating trend known as “alternative data”. As just about everything in our lives is getting sensed and captured by technology, financial services firms have been turning their attention to startups, with the hope of mining their data to extract the type of gold nuggets that will enable them to beat the market.
The opportunity is open to a wide range of startups. Many tech companies these days generate an interesting “data exhaust” as a by-product of their core activity. If your company offers a payment solution, you may have interesting data on what people buy. A mobile app may accumulate geo-location data on where people shop or how often they go to the movies. A connected health device may know who gets sick when and where. A commerce company may have data on trends and consumer preferences. A SaaS provider may know what corporations purchase, or how many employees they hire, in which region. And so on and so forth.
We may be calling this alternative data right now, but it is almost certainly just a matter of time before it simply becomes: the data.
I like the term “data exhaust” that Matt uses, because it feels like it accurately captures what is going on right now. The new economy is producing a lot of byproduct. If you clean it up and package it in the right way, then you might be creating additional value. But if you don’t, then it’s probably just exhaust.
I have written about Foursquare a number of times over the years (here and here) and I continue to be a regular user. I am intrigued by all of the location-based data that they collect through their apps.
Below is a recent Recode Decode (podcast) with Dennis Crowley (co-founder) and Jeff Glueck (CEO) of Foursquare. They are talking about what’s next for the company. If you can’t see it below, click here.
Here’s a content sample from Recode:
Today, Foursquare makes most of its money from selling that data to big companies, calling itself a “location intelligence company.” But as co-founder Dennis Crowley and CEO Jeff Glueck explained on the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, they haven’t stopped thinking about everyday users.
“Imagine a friend is walking alongside you,” Crowley said. “Can we make a personality like that, that talks to you in that sense? It’s not 30 years out. We’re going to be playing with this stuff a year from now.”
“I want to make that Scarlett Johansson that whispers in your ear, but it’s all about local places and local discovery,” he added. “I want to replicate the experience of walking through the city with a friend that knows the city inside and out, and I want to make that for millions of people.”
I thought some of you might find this interesting.
Swarm recently released version 5.0 of its mobile app. Blog post here. Instead of gamification (leaderboards and so on), the emphasis is now on lifelogging – a more personal collection of all the places you’ve been.
Here’s what that looks like:
The most notable change is a front and center map that shows you all of your check-ins. You can also zoom in and really explore where you’ve been, geographically. Swarm refers to it as a “virtual memory book.”
Lifelogging is absolutely the main reason why I use Swarm and why it still finds itself on my home screen. One of the reasons I enjoy blogging is that it’s a public diary. Swarm is a modified version of that for me. So this change feels right.
My other Swarm use cases are being able to share check-ins to Twitter and serendipitous encounters with friends.
But the more I use Swarm the more I think that divorcing this use case from Foursquare (this happened in 2014) was a mistake. If Swarm is now about lifelogging (instead of just playful check-ins) and if Foursquare is about finding the perfect place to go out, then why not merge these experiences?
Tell me where I should be going, let me make lists of places I want to go, and then let me log it to my diary along with tips for other people.
At the time of the divorce, the data seemed to suggest that very few people did both of these things within the consolidated app. People either checked-in or they looked for a place to go. Rarely did they do both.
Perhaps that would be different with lifelogging.
Last year, social media company Foursquare predicted that Chipotle would see a ~30% drop in its Q1 2016 sales. It knew this because the geo-location data from people using its app (check-ins and passive visits) was also down. They had figured out the relationship between foot traffic and sales. I think I wrote about this in the first half of last of year.
Not surprisingly, lots of companies – including those on Wall Street – are now starting to pay attention to data sets such as these. Matt Turck wrote a great blog post about it this morning, called: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants your Data. Here’s an excerpt:
That a social media company could be building a data asset of immense value to Wall Street is part of an accelerating trend known as “alternative data”. As just about everything in our lives is getting sensed and captured by technology, financial services firms have been turning their attention to startups, with the hope of mining their data to extract the type of gold nuggets that will enable them to beat the market.
The opportunity is open to a wide range of startups. Many tech companies these days generate an interesting “data exhaust” as a by-product of their core activity. If your company offers a payment solution, you may have interesting data on what people buy. A mobile app may accumulate geo-location data on where people shop or how often they go to the movies. A connected health device may know who gets sick when and where. A commerce company may have data on trends and consumer preferences. A SaaS provider may know what corporations purchase, or how many employees they hire, in which region. And so on and so forth.
We may be calling this alternative data right now, but it is almost certainly just a matter of time before it simply becomes: the data.
I like the term “data exhaust” that Matt uses, because it feels like it accurately captures what is going on right now. The new economy is producing a lot of byproduct. If you clean it up and package it in the right way, then you might be creating additional value. But if you don’t, then it’s probably just exhaust.
I have written about Foursquare a number of times over the years (here and here) and I continue to be a regular user. I am intrigued by all of the location-based data that they collect through their apps.
Below is a recent Recode Decode (podcast) with Dennis Crowley (co-founder) and Jeff Glueck (CEO) of Foursquare. They are talking about what’s next for the company. If you can’t see it below, click here.
Here’s a content sample from Recode:
Today, Foursquare makes most of its money from selling that data to big companies, calling itself a “location intelligence company.” But as co-founder Dennis Crowley and CEO Jeff Glueck explained on the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, they haven’t stopped thinking about everyday users.
“Imagine a friend is walking alongside you,” Crowley said. “Can we make a personality like that, that talks to you in that sense? It’s not 30 years out. We’re going to be playing with this stuff a year from now.”
“I want to make that Scarlett Johansson that whispers in your ear, but it’s all about local places and local discovery,” he added. “I want to replicate the experience of walking through the city with a friend that knows the city inside and out, and I want to make that for millions of people.”
I thought some of you might find this interesting.
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