Facebook Had Offered Foursquare $120 Million, Foursquare Asked For $150 Million, Then Facebook Walked Away. Town Plans Foursquare ‘Foxhunt’ As Twitter started to grow in popularity we saw ‘Twestival’ meetup (or ‘tweetup’) events emerge. Maybe it’s a sign of Foursquare’s growth that a UK town is to host a ‘Foursquarestival’, although this is a little more interesting than just being a meetup – it’s a game created to showcase Foursquare’s potential. Billed as a “Unique participatory event”, Foursquarestival players in the town of Cheltenham “will compete in a foxhunt that will lead them around points of artistic and cultural significance in the town, visiting independent traders along the way and finally finishing at a secret party location.”
The organisers tell us: “On the event day participants (the ‘hounds’) will have to locate a series of ‘foxes – each one will provide a clue as to the location of the next. The Cheltenham Foursquarestival has been organised by design agency managing director Andy Thorne and freelance PR Holly Knowlman. Inside Foursquare: Checking In Before the Party Started (Part I)
Shane Snow has been bothering the Foursquare crew since before the startup was funded and became the internet’s darling du jour. A student at Columbia’s School of Journalism at the time, Snow was in the room during key moments in the company’s early history, and was granted more than 30 exclusive interviews over the course of six months. This is the first installment of a two-part series chronicling Snow’s inside view of the birth of Foursquare, one of the most talked-about tech companies of 2010. Dubbed ‘highly competitive’ by his friends, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley loves games. And he doesn’t like to lose. The top of Dennis Crowley’s toilet is home to the 176-page paperback, Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less, and a stack of snowboarding magazines, but no one is reading tonight. It’s Dec. 18, 2009, the night of Crowley’s annual BYOTTHOTMFT (Bring Your Own Thing To Hang On This M-F**king Tree) party.
A collective “Ohhhh!” He’s losing his own game at his own party. Inside Foursquare: Checking In Before the Party Started (Part II. In Part I of our insider look at the earliest days of Foursquare, we saw everything go downhill in a flurry of technical catastrophes. But we also caught a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. In this second and concluding installment we join the founders at South By SouthWest — the debutante ball of the internet startup world — utter the “G” word and consider the iPhone conundrum.
‘I’m waiting for the first original thing they come out with,’ Crowley says of Gowalla. The rapidly growing number of workstations at Foursquare’s office look like scene from the Matrix: split keyboards, obscure wires and a disconcerting old cup of something that might be soup. No trench coats, though. Code is compiling on co-founder Naveen Selvadurai’s screen. The mood is at once casual and intense. “Oh man, oh man,” he repeats about every 30 seconds. Heymann rants to no one in particular. They’re also battling with ways to curb cheating, an inevitable byproduct of the game. The tension is thick. Foursquare Blocked In China, Possibly Related To Tiananmen Squar. Looks like Foursquare is experiencing the questionable honor of getting the attention of the Chinese government.
Authorities appear to have blocked the service, at least in mainland China, according to many a tweet from Chinese location sharers. While this obviously can’t easily be confirmed, it appears as though the block is a result of Foursquare users checking in to another kind of square: Tian’anmen Square, the infamous plaza in China’s capital of Beijing (Peking). The Chinese government is likely keeping a tight lock on which Internet services it allows its citizens to use today because of the sensitivity of the date. Background: the protests of 1989 at Tian’anmen Square, which resulted in the massacre of Chinese protesters, occurred on the night of June 3 and the early morning of June 4. It remains to be seen if Foursquare will remain blocked for the foreseeable future or if this is just a temporary ban.
(Thanks to CL for the heads up)