CANNES - Foursquare What is the service more "trendy" at the time no doubt. It is to confirm the current rating of the company founded by Naveen Selvadurai and Dennis Crowley, according to Bloomberg, worth more than $ 250 million. Selvadurai We met in Cannes at the Midem, where the co-founder of Foursquare has also announced that the geolocation service, which has already forged partnerships with several companies such as Pepsi Co, Zagat, Starbucks, Safeways, obtaining his first earnings probably would be a new round of funding by the end of the year, but is not interested in an IPO.Foursquare Labs Inc. has already had a good support in a first round of funding, which led, among others, Marc Andresseen the fund (which has invested more than twenty million dollars), and strong of the six million people who managed to engage in a little over a year, is confident he can get more financial support to ensure that growth is getting faster and faster.
"We are growing quickly," Selvadurai said, "and probably will reach ten million people in the next summer." Of course, the area of location-based services is growing every day more crowded, and even the large social networks, considering the growth of Foursquare, are starting to offer some additions on the same line.
"But do not worry us very much," says Selvadurai, "while others want the users to remain connected to their computer, our concept is exactly the opposite, most of our users are away from home the better. Our goal remains that of encouraging users to explore and discover new places. " Foursquare is a LBS, a location based service ", for putting together a part of the game and part of" social networking ", a bit 'of maps and tourist guide, allows those who install special software on their mobile phones or tablet "check in" at any local restaurant, club, bar, museum, office building, and leave a message, tracing this way not only the map of places visited, but also allows you to report the presence of our friends, and to give recommendations and advice to other visitors.
Selvadurai comes from the music: "I worked at Sony, where I worked part linked to the phone, I built a music store for mobile. But at some point I thought that was not what I wanted to do and I resigned. I started to look around and I started working with a company that moved in the social nteworking, Socialight, working platforms, local, microblogging, many things that put together mobile and social.
And that's where I met Dennis Crawley, who told me about his Dodgeball, a service that had created and then sold to Google, which could indicate to where you were friends through SMS. We started to think about what could improve the experience of Dodgeball, with other data, allowing people to add more of them, following the locations frequented.
We started to put down different ideas, the advent of GPS and smartphones has changed everything and allowed us to get at creating Foursquare. "Foursquare was launched in March 2009 at South By Southwest in Austin in June and has arrived 'app on the iPhone, since then, growth has been overwhelming.
"I think the key to our success is that the whole thing is in the hands of users, and that the element of play, the" badge ", the" check in ", the results, makes it not only useful but also fun." The growth opportunities are a lot of Foursquare. "We're focusing on having a closer relationship with business, to get users more "reward", but also discounts, prizes, offers, and make sure that the "check in" are always more motivated.
We are experimenting with ways in which small retailers can interact directly with their customers, but also with institutions, museums, to make things more interactive. " And the privacy? "Data is shared only with friends, with whom you want in short, who is not listed does not see anything.
And you can also add data which is and remains visible only to insert them. The privacy for us is very important ".
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