Foursquare CEO on moving past the ‘mayor’ jokes
I did a Q&A with Foursquare co-founder/CEO Dennis Crowley for ReadWriteWeb, and one of the main things we talked about was Foursquare’s need to get past some of its initial clichés and stereotypes — mayors, badges, etc. — and mature into a more mainstream service.
Interestingly, Crowley says that this is where Foursquare is taking a page from Twitter’s book:
The challenge isn’t really that dissimilar than some of the growing pains and hazing that Twitter went through. For a long time, Twitter was “oh, it’s just people tweeting what they had for lunch, or that they’re going to the movies.” That wasn’t interesting for a lot of people.
Then they hit a moment that was a little bit of critical mass and a little bit of clarity, where people started using it to break news and share headlines and spread information. And that’s when it started clicking for a lot of people. […]
I look at what those guys went through, and if you just keep pushing at the vision long enough, it will eventually turn itself around or make itself clear to people.
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