I'd be interested in the views of people that aren't in the US, and especially not in Western countries. Foursquare's database is great in the US, but when I've traveled I've found it to be nowhere near as good - I wonder if - in those cases - Facebook Places is better.
After Facebook acquired Instagram they were really clear that they wanted them to stay independent. I wonder how "independently" they made this decision to switch to Facebook Places instead of Foursquare. Instagram ads are most likely just Facebook's new ad platform. Facebook just removed their Camera app from the app store (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2457866,00.asp) because Instagram IS their Camera app.
They seem to be following the same course with Moves, the fitness tracking app they acquired recently.
You used to be able to tag locations with foursquare data, that feature was removed in the latest update. I assume facebook places will be replacing them.
I'm not a deep user of Instagram, but I'm wondering if Facebook's places database is better (more meta data, better accuracy, more user feedback, etc) than Foresquare's location information?
Foursquare has well-curated data that's easy for users to edit and update. Duplicates are removed quickly, closed or moved places are updated almost instantly. It's an excellent gamified system for building accurate location data.
Facebook, on the other hand, allows you to attach a freeform place to anything (photo, event, review, whatever). These freeform places are not managed well. In a cursory search for a common park in my city, there were 12 duplicates and 8-10 irrelevant only slightly related places returned. The correct place was at the top, but a duplicate was in the top 10.
It could be an Apple Maps situation. Bad now, but likely will get better as people use it more.
So, this seems like a big deal, but really it just means when you go to tag a place in your post ... the place won't be there and you'll skip the location tag on your post.
If anything, it'll improve Facebook Places because people will enter more venues, as I'd imagine more people tag locations in instagram than use Facebook's social checkin feature.
To all the people automatically assuming that this is a result of facebook acquiring instagram, what if this actually improves the user experience? What if instagram always wanted to integrate with facebook because they knew it was a better user experience and yet didn't because they knew facebook was instagram's #1 competitor? In that case the acquisition enables a positive.
I, for one, could not give a crap about foursquare and yet use facebook on a daily basis. I understand foursquare has its community of supporters but I don't think any objective person will argue that foursquare is on a solid trajectory. In that case, it'd make sense to go with a more established player.
The fact is, Foursquare has a truly excellent place database that's well-curated by users and is highly accurate due to the nature of their product.
Facebook does not. It has a mess of duplicate places and incorrect names due to the nature of their product. Hopefully this will be an impetus for improving their location database, but until then I don't see it being a better experience at all.
A contrarian "What if" question is fun and good to ask, but it's not automatically valid.
Obviously the acquisition changes the calculus no matter how independent the players claim the companies will continue to act independently.
However, I think you are quite possibly right. Acting independently does not preclude Instagram from switching to Facebook place information. There are large benefits to using Facebook data over Foursquare not the least of which is better data outside the US. And with Foursquare on perennial death watch and switching directions frequently (including very recently), switching away from it is probably a wise business decision.
[+] [-] rsobers|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shkkmo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nighthawk24|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbreit|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] joefarish|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ceejayoz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wlindner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fred_durst|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] things|12 years ago|reply
You used to be able to tag locations with foursquare data, that feature was removed in the latest update. I assume facebook places will be replacing them.
[+] [-] wlindner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcnully|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wlindner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeblau|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calinet6|12 years ago|reply
Foursquare has well-curated data that's easy for users to edit and update. Duplicates are removed quickly, closed or moved places are updated almost instantly. It's an excellent gamified system for building accurate location data.
Facebook, on the other hand, allows you to attach a freeform place to anything (photo, event, review, whatever). These freeform places are not managed well. In a cursory search for a common park in my city, there were 12 duplicates and 8-10 irrelevant only slightly related places returned. The correct place was at the top, but a duplicate was in the top 10.
It could be an Apple Maps situation. Bad now, but likely will get better as people use it more.
[+] [-] bigdubs|12 years ago|reply
If anything, it'll improve Facebook Places because people will enter more venues, as I'd imagine more people tag locations in instagram than use Facebook's social checkin feature.
[+] [-] GFischer|12 years ago|reply
As many have said, Facebooks' data is not necessarily very good (especially lots of duplicates).
calinet6 said it best:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743917
I do agree that this move will probably contribute better data to Facebook Places.
[+] [-] bluthru|12 years ago|reply
https://medium.com/five-hundred-words/dad4c3736409
[+] [-] minikites|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wlindner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulrov|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zaidf|12 years ago|reply
I, for one, could not give a crap about foursquare and yet use facebook on a daily basis. I understand foursquare has its community of supporters but I don't think any objective person will argue that foursquare is on a solid trajectory. In that case, it'd make sense to go with a more established player.
[+] [-] calinet6|12 years ago|reply
Facebook does not. It has a mess of duplicate places and incorrect names due to the nature of their product. Hopefully this will be an impetus for improving their location database, but until then I don't see it being a better experience at all.
A contrarian "What if" question is fun and good to ask, but it's not automatically valid.
[+] [-] Aqueous|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbreit|12 years ago|reply
However, I think you are quite possibly right. Acting independently does not preclude Instagram from switching to Facebook place information. There are large benefits to using Facebook data over Foursquare not the least of which is better data outside the US. And with Foursquare on perennial death watch and switching directions frequently (including very recently), switching away from it is probably a wise business decision.
[+] [-] nighthawk24|12 years ago|reply