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Per patiti del web/4 - Le pillole di SXSW by Matteo Sarzana/VML@Y&R

12/03/2012

SXSW è un festival musicale, cinematografico e delle tecnologie emergenti che ha luogo ogni anno a marzo ad Austin (Texas) e che quest’anno celebra il 25°anniversario. Dal 1994, le conferenze nel campo interattivo hanno fatto del Festival il luogo ideale per il lancio di tecnologie digitali emergenti. In diretta da Austin per Youmark ogni giorno le pillole con le novità principali, raccontate da Matteo Sarzana, general manager di VML, la divisione digital di Y&R Brands. 

Making the Real World Easier to Use
Dennis Crowley, MG Siegler 

Was important launching foursquare at sxsw?
We did not plan to launch it. We set it as a deadline. We had no biz cards, nothing planned but then we launched it and it worked.
Naveen is now leaving, why?
As the company has been growing our roles had changed a lot. My role has changed and Naveen has changed role as well, maybe he wants to work in a different environment.
You’re almost close to 20mio users now, do you see google’s service as a competitor?
Well, it’s preinstalled, while foursquare needs to be installed and so our users are more valuable, we do want to have users who love our product.
facebook deals didn’t work, why are yours working?
Foursquare specials have always been integrated into the platform. It was a core part of the product rewarding the users for going to a specific place and using the datas we’re collecting to learn about the customers.

We’re in the process of de-constructing the app and re-build it in order to move the attention away from the checkins since we want our users to use all the great features we put into the app like list, menus, opening hours…

We want everyone who opens the app to be exposed to the “explore” feature since that’s the feature which differentiate us from the other geo-localization based apps.
With radar we want to make use of all the datas, a huge amount we have, to serve the users. The only problem is that it drains the battery and that’s why we pushed it in the back for a while waiting for the battery life to become better.
We envision the day in which radar will be able to automatically checkin into the place you’re entering. It will always be an opt-in possibility.

What about privacy? Anytime anyone is doing anything on the internet, then their privacy is killed so why should it be different for foursquare?
The user base is 55% male 45% female.

The vision for the radar is to avoid people going to their phone every 5 minutes, but to serve the people with tips and datas they will find useful.
We are also thinking about how to turn tips into recommendation. Maybe not the kind of stuff yelp does, but a more subtle kind of recommendation based on actual comments.
Every time a new, more powerful device, appear we think of new stuff we can have foursquare running in the background to serve the users.
Also the level badges will be used to push informations with radar, if you’re a level 8 coffe badge, your tips will be valued more than those of the level 2 coffe badge holder.
Why gowalla didn’t take off?
I think foursquare had an advantage since we built dodgeball before and also we had a clear goal “foursquare needs to make people’s live better”.
We knew we were going to be one of those big companies, the biggest of the small guys, while gowalla had a different path, they decided to sell.
Foursquare in sxsw is what foursquare will look like in the future “800people checked in at acc, 300 at the airport, etc this is what the future should look like.
We’re 100 people no, if we keep doing what we’re doing now, we will be one of the big companies of the future.
Why did you retire the douchebag badge? Because people were getting offended when they unlocked it.
Are doing anything with the point system?
It’s secondary now, but it’s another part of the gamification process and we’re using points for cool datas to describe the context like “you’ve travelled x miles, you’re back in Austin, first time in Kansas, etc”. we also thought about redeeming points for good or for services.
Amex has been a great partner and deals are the key through which we are expanding our user base since we’re helping people save money.
We’ve a lot of datas about all kind of customers, loyal, dormant, etc, and we’re enabling merchants to connect with customers.
There are 20.000 developers using the foursquare apis and as soon as we will get revenues, which is not happening right now, we will be happy to share revenues with them.
I don’t wanna move away from gamification since it’s a great boarding tool for first time users, but that’s not going to be our main objective. We don’t wanna make games, we wanna create apps who are useful in an entertaining way.
Our database is great and it gets updated every second by our users.
Foursquare has created a new pattern and users needs to learn how to use it, that’s why it took time to extend our user base.

Matteo Sarzana, Austin

 

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