Foursquare announced a new app yesterday. It comes at a time when Foursquare faces questions about the long-term sustainability of its business, as it has pivoted to a more discovery-focused model.

Today Yelp already handles many local discovery queries and Facebook’s Graph Search pushes into the discovery space too.

Key questions I pose to Foursquare are:

1) Do you think saving 4sq check-ins in Facebook as Places is still a good idea?
Why? - You are feeding Facebook’s Graph Search. Us the scrobbling producing enough traffic back that it matters? My gut says YES in which case, 4sq needs discovery models based on taste trends in addition to geo-location & my network. My network as a NYer loyalist is awesome but other people’s 4sq results are awful.

As a 4sq loyalist, I never use FB places and have strict privacy settings on it but my 4sq activity provides Graph Search years of data on where I’ve been.

2) Do you recognize who your demo is vs Yelp?

I use both. I think there is a age & purpose gap between Yelp and Foursquarr.

As a Gen-Yer, if I want to discover places near me when I am traveling I use Foursquare.
Why? - Discovery on the go when personalization is important to me or tracking where I’ve been so I can easily share my reccomendation with friends. I’m plugged in to discovery and want to leverage the people I know to go to things related to my interests (my network alone is a passive interest indicator to me).

If I want to get a local review on a business like a spa or restaurant outside of my personalized 4sq demo then I go to Yelp.
Why? - My friends might not have been to the same Living Social spa I am checking out but I care about stranger reviews in that instance. This is why Yelp & Google murder Yellow Pages when it comes to where GenY internet users look for local services.