Disqus - Latest Comments for dens

Re: Social Network Football League

dens — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 11:57:59 -0000

Love this! But how do we get a @Foursquare one? :)

Re: Fake bibs being probed by Boston Marathon organizers

dens — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 12:54:41 -0000

Hey all -

Dennis Crowley (Chelsa's husband) here chiming in on this. First of all, our apologies to anyone we offended. After running together last year, getting split up and not finishing together (Chelsa finished, I did not), we both felt like we needed to run again and finish together to get closure. I wrote a blog post about our experiences last year and my motivation to run Boston again this year: https://medium.com/editors-...

Yes, using a duplicate number to get Chelsa into the starting corral with me was wrong. I don't expect everyone to understand our strong need to run and and finish together -- but after trying unsuccessfully to get a charity number and trying unsuccessfully to officially transfer a number from an injured-runner friend, we did what we could to make sure we could run together in hopes of finishing together.

I sent an email to Kathy Brown, the woman who rightfully earned #34033 to apologize for any disrespect, hurt feelings or confusion. Our intent was never to "steal" anything from anyone -- our intent was to finish the Boston Marathon together as we tried to do last year. (#34033 = first 3 numbers of my number + "33" which is Chelsa's age. We chose a number close to my number to ensure we'd be next to each other at the start.)

Again, sincerest apologies to anyone we offended or disrespected, including the BAA and the police/fire/EMT crews that worked so hard to make sure Monday's race was safe for all runners.

Dennis + Chelsa

Re: Connecting the (Foursquare) Dots

dens — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:11:17 -0000

Hey, thanks for coming to the keynote. Next time you are out and about and looking for something to eat / drink / do, try using Foursquare to search for things nearby. Remember, you don't have to checkin to use Foursquare... you can search / browse and get results from the 3,000,000,000 (3 billion!) checkins that the rest of the community has added.

Re: Timehop, the aha moment I’ve been using Timehop... | Todd Wickersty

dens — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 11:36:49 -0000

love this story. :)

Re: Why Foursquare's Dennis Crowley Obsessively Changes Location

dens — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 18:26:27 -0000

ps: the "... it's like fashion, it's never finished" quote is from the Zuck character in the FB movie :)

Re: A Word From Your Sponsor

dens — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 13:07:03 -0000

fwiw - we got paid for the shoot, tho we donated the money to Camp Interactive, a non-profit here in NYC that teaches inner-city kids tech skills. http://campinteractive.org

Re: How to Avoid Being Pushed Out of the Company You Founded

dens — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:42:21 -0000

Yes, but the BI quote is an edited version of the conversation I had w/ Alyson, while the quote you are using is an edited version of the edited version she used. I'm sure you can understand the difference.

Re: How to Avoid Being Pushed Out of the Company You Founded

dens — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:40:52 -0000

>> “Naveen was the one guy who knew how to make iPhone stuff,”

This quote is originally from an interview I did with Business Insider and is being used out of context in this piece to suggest that I discount Naveen's contributions. (The orignal quote goes something along the lines of, "He was the guy that knew how to make iPhone apps. I was the guy that knew how to build social stuff. We both liked making apps to hack cities.")

I know you guys are trying to cut this story up 1000 different ways because it's great for page views, but truth be told, foursquare wouldn't be what is is today - the app, the company, the API, the culture, everything - if it wasn't for Naveen.

-d

Re: Feature Friday: Foursquare Radar

dens — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:16:15 -0000

>> i'd like this to be predicted based on my past history. what time i normally eat etc if i've just eaten then i don't want to be informed of good places to eat until i'm ready to eat again.

This is exactly how our "Explore" recommendation engine works (tho the "ready to eat again" is kind of subjective)

(and the Explore engine powers both the "Explore" tab in the app and our new "Radar" feature)

Re: Feature Friday: Foursquare Radar

dens — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:55:45 -0000

> Anyone think this is evidence of them moving towards the tail-end of their innovative curve?

Ha. We just getting warmed up.

I think we've got enough in our existing roadmap docs to keep us busy for another 5 years.

(and when we feel comfortable w/ the rest-of-the-world using Radar and we crank the volume back up - back to to the way the folks at foursquare HQ have been experiencing the feature over the last few weeks - I think we're going to blow a lot of people's minds :)

>> If I am walking around a neighborhood and wondering where to grab coffee, I will use Explore or Lists, and this task should be communicated and resolved with good UX + UI, not with pushing extra feature notifications on the user.

Yeah, but this requires that the first thing you think of when you're hungry / etc is to pull out foursquare and ask it a question. We've had a lot of early successes that way, but that's not the way that people are wired to think.

In the early days of dodgeball we used to talk about "technology that facilitates serendipity" and I think the stuff we're launching these days is still pretty true to that... "serendipity" being software that works behind the scenes to connect the dots and let you know about it rather than all of us walking around glued to our mobile screens all day long.

Re: Feature Friday: Foursquare Radar

dens — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:58:48 -0000

Without giving away future roadmap, earning a badge for going to 20 different pizza places is kind of like saying "hey, you're an expert in pizza places in NYC". This type of thinking is being build into the ranking algorithms. #staytuned

Re: Feature Friday: Foursquare Radar

dens — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:51:16 -0000

If you read up on the new region-monitoring stuff you'll see some of the hooks. We experimented on iPhone pre IOS5 and were chewing thru batteries in 4 hours. Similar (tho slightly better) with Android. The APIs that power Radar in iOS5 will power a bunch of new stuff going fwd, including Android.

Re: Feature Friday: Foursquare Radar

dens — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:33:48 -0000

Ha, this is the stuff I've been wanting to build since I was at Vindigo... literally 10 years ago. I didn't sleep at all the night before we launched and I slept like a baby the night after it's release. :)

Re: Feature Friday: Foursquare Radar

dens — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:32:15 -0000

FWIW - this type of thinking is built into my product planning. I had the same experience with Twitter in 2007 - 2008... tried it, wasn't into it. Tried it again, wasn't into it. And then on the 3rd or 4th time Twitter stuck with me.

We're doing the same w/ foursquare (and we can see it in the usage / cohort numbers). When people "come back" these days they're more likely to stick around I think we're maybe 1-2 releases away from having that super-sticky experience.

Re: Feature Friday: Foursquare Radar

dens — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:30:23 -0000

It's technically different to do on Android vs. iOS because both handle background-location differently. We opted for iPhone first since parts of iOS5 were specifically optimized for the use cases we were trying to solve (aka: better battery life, better GPS lookups faster)

Re: Feature Friday: Foursquare Radar

dens — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:27:06 -0000

I *love* this use case (as do a bunch of folks at foursquare). We'll make this happen.

(baby steps = have you seen what we did w/ History Channel? https://foursquare.com/hist... )

Re: Worthless Stock Certificates

dens — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:36:25 -0000

Vindigo was my second job out of school and the startup that got me on the "build things that make cities easier to use" kick.

David & Jason (Vindigo co-founders) were both huge inspirations to me... two guys that quit their day jobs to start a company that build things they wanted to use.

Re: Explorsquare

dens — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:56:03 -0000

I get the "hard to use" thing... signup has been wonky, checkin can be slow.

Our internal Q1 rally point was "make it feel like every checkin counts", wich I think we nailed w/ Explore and the new game mechanics (points, leaderboard)

Our Q2 rally point is "make the whole thing easier / lighter / faster". Check out the new signup flow we just launched on the web (!!). A similar streamlined approach coming to mobile and there's 3-4 prototypes of *super fast* checkin flows making the rounds in the office.

#staytuned

Re: Explorsquare

dens — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:53:47 -0000

I actually find the explore stuff is *most interesting* in neighborhoods you already know. e.g. I've been using it in the East Village to find *new* brunch places and *new* sushi spots... basically as a tool to assist me in breaking out of my regular routines.

Very interesting to hear a few comments here from people who don't think about using it in neighborhoods they feel they already know, but I think this is where the product really shines.

-d

Re: What Should Mashable Ask Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley at SXSWi?

dens — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:11:44 -0000

Ha, interesting... my favorite badge is "16 Candles", the one you get for shouting out "happy birthday!" a bunch of different times (presumably because you've been to a whole bunch of birthday parties). I always love seeing the "Swarm" ones too - when we built the original Swarm badges we *never* thought we'd get 50 foursquare checked into one place. Now we've had to create new swarm types for events with 1000 foursquare people checked in at once... very exciting!

(btw, only answering the questions I know we won't get to in Q&A)

Re: What Should Mashable Ask Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley at SXSWi?

dens — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:01:38 -0000

This is an easy one. We're building tools for local merchants that have never existed before. Think: Google Analytics but for coffee shops and cafes... and then tools on top of this data that can help local merchants reward their most loyal customers and find new ones. The merchants love it and we're just getting started...

Re: What Should Mashable Ask Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley at SXSWi?

dens — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:16:44 -0000

We're hustling to get this stuff for ourselves internally (we hired our first "analytics engineer" a few months ago). I'd like to make this stuff publicly available in the future, but it's gonna take us time to build the systems that auto generate the stats and filter by geographies.

(btw, only answering the questions I know we won't get to in Q&A)

Re: What Should Mashable Ask Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley at SXSWi?

dens — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:15:05 -0000

Yes, BB can be a tough platform to develop for (lots of handsets in lots of flavors). Our BB team is working on a build for SXSW that should fix some key bugs and performance issues.

(btw, only answering the questions I know we won't get to in Q&A)

Re: What Should Mashable Ask Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley at SXSWi?

dens — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:14:13 -0000

Ha, who doesn't? Check out the new Tinie Tempah album (Disc-Overy) - was listening today and like it a lot. Also, check out J.Cole

(btw, only answering the questions I know we won't get to in Q&A)

Re: Am I mayor yet?

dens — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:24:22 -0000

Yeah, this was on our list foreeevvvveeerrr... it's nice to finally get around to fixing / launching new stuff. (oh, and we're just getting warmed up!)