Notes On A Revolution

So a new version of Foursquare’s app for iPhone and Android dropped today, some interesting features along with it, which plenty of other people will cover.

What I’ve been thinking a lot about over the past few days is Instagram, and how it has driven me to continue checking in when Foursquare was actually the last thing on my mind.

Instagram gives me a relatively hassle-free way to create some interesting content and share it so easily it kinda blows my mind sometimes. And then it pushes this content into the networks I care about publishing to, most of the time Foursquare and Tumblr.

I’ve been saying for a number of years now the successful products and services will be the ones that continue to lower the barrier to self-expression. Foursquare didn’t do that very well, but other people have picked up the slack and automated a lot of the content-creation for the service. Ultimately a bunch of photos and no guides to city life won’t make Foursquare a better platform, but the photos will add some crucial colour and life.

All this happens via Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs. Developers create APIs in the hope that other developers will use what they’ve made and build on top of it. Instagram built on top of Foursquare’s API, and we’re now starting to see others building on top of Instagram’s API. That will drive further adoption of Instagram, which will in turn drive greater use of Foursquare…you see where I’m going with this.

In an ecosystem, the biggest opportunity is building as close to the center as possible. I wouldn’t say Foursquare are in the very center, but I don’t think, in their category anyway, they’re far from it. As people build increasingly popular services on layers who themselves have built on Foursquare, they stand to reap tremendous rewards.