From foursquare to FIVEsquare

In a recent post ("Blogging like it's 1999") we mentioned Fred Wilson's portfolio company Foursquare. One of Fred's regular commenters, entrepreneur and investor Andy Swan, also mentioned it on his blog. This was his take (Introducing FIVEsquare):

By now you’ve probably heard of foursquare, the mobile internet sensation that has everyone talking, and VC’s opening their checkbooks.

But just like 7 minute abs and 6 hour power crushed their competition, we are here today to bring an even more effective product to the world.

Introducing, FIVEsquare…. the “mobile meets local” web pi app of the future. It is to local-mobile-apps what dippin’ dots is to ice cream, if you catch my drift.

So how does FIVEsquare work?

Because FIVEsquare is common-sense based, it requires no download, no install and no login. There are several ways to make FIVEsquare work for you:

One to One communication: When you want to know where a friend is on FIVEsquare, you simply pull your phone out of your pocket and either dial their phone number (VOICEsquare), or send them a SMS message (TEXTsquare) with the following message “Hey, where are you?” Unlike foursquare, if you are leaving where you are at and going somewhere else, you can tell your friend where you are going, and what time you can meet there (PREDICTsquare)

One-to-Many Location notification: Let’s say you want to tell all of your friends where you’re at or where you’re going. With FIVEsquare, you simply send out a message on twitter (TWITsquare) something like this “I’m going to the saloon around 7:00 if anyone wants to meet up!”. Let FIVEsquare do the rest. Before you know it, individual friends will be meeting you places or using VOICEsquare to get more details and let you know where they are going!

Friend Nearby Alerts: FIVEsquare utilizes “visual recognition technology” to alert you whenever your friend is in the same location as you. To utilize this service (SEEsquare), simply put your phone into your pocket when you walk into a location, look around and see if there is anyone in there that you recognize. Another FIVEsquare miracle!

Badges and Titles: With FIVEsquare, you don’t have to go into a place a certain number of times or compete with others for rewards and titles. Simply decide (CLAIMsquare) what you want to be for this location (King, Mayor, Lord, Peasant, Dictator, etc) and claim it! Then, tell people that you are the ____ of _____ and they will give you just as much respect as anyone is getting on foursquare!

Locations: While foursquare only works in select cities, FIVEsquare already works world-wide. Any location, anytime. That’s our promise to you.

So…what are you waiting for? Whether you want to invite friends to join you somewhere via VOICEsquare, figure out where your friends are via SEEsquare, or increase your prestige via CLAIMsquare, you’re in business with our new startup. Get out there and start using FIVEsquare to improve your social life today!

p.s. To help spread the word about FIVEsquare, please use the #fivesquare tag and let your friends know that you connected to them via fivesquare. We’ll be running a beta-test in Louisville this evening.

Blogging like it's 1999

One of the reasons I like reading venture capitalist Fred Wilson's blog is that it reminds me of 1999. Remember when the economy was booming, unemployment was at ~4%, the stock market was hitting new highs, and Internet businesses were focused more on gaining users than generating revenues? That last part, at least, is still the case with some of the ventures Fred writes about, and it makes me a little nostalgic for the good old days. Here was Fred blogging about one of his portfolio companies, Foursquare yesterday:

I was having breakfast at Pastis with a friend today. The "mayor" of that restaurant, Mark Ghuneim, walks in and goes to the bar to order his morning coffee to go. I said to my friend, "watch this, he's going to pull out his phone and then look up and and try to locate me in this restaurant". My friend, who is not on foursquare, says to me "how do you know?" I said "trust me". Sure enough, Mark starts looking around the restaurant and spots us and comes over and has a ten minute conversation about web music stuff (and foursquare).

When I checked in this morning at Pastis, I added a shout that said "getting a demo of a hot new web music service". The CEO of Targetspot, Eyal Goldwerger, saw that on his phone and jumped in a subway to come down and see the demo too. Sadly, we had left by the time he got there.

But both anecdotes are examples of why foursquare has such potential. It seems like such a simple and whimsical service. You just checkin to places via your phone. But the data that it creates and the way it is published out to your social graph is powerful. I expect we'll see a lot more of this sort of thing as the user base on foursquare hits six figures and hopefully seven figures in the coming months.

A commenter of his named Greg responded:

I don't think Foursquare is going to grow. Fred, your position is unique -- you're a micro-celebrity, people want to see you because they want to grovel for your money. The average person, though, has only 10-20 friends, and random people aren't checking to see them at all hours of the day. Checking in, then, quickly becomes a lonely and pointless experience; the virtual badges get old fast, there are no great anecdotes of people visiting you, and the deals businesses offer for mayors are sparse and easily gamed.

Foursquare is a case-study in the tech industry hype-machine. Because it's useful for micro-celebrities, you have exactly those people hyping it up: MG Siegler, yourself, etc.

Greg makes a similar point to the one I speculated about in this post, Social Media: the new Public Access TV?.