Foursquare Turns Down $100M

theodp writes "Valleywag is stupefied that 'an annoying, unprofitable social network like Foursquare would turn down $100 million,' a move inspired in part by Twitter's 2008 rejection of a $500 million offer from Facebook, which in turn once rejected a $900 million bid from Yahoo. Time will tell whether the move by Foursquare was a prescient one, but it's certainly gutsy. After all, today's $850 million company can prove to be tomorrow's worthless one, right AOL?"

Comments

Well..

[ZeroExistenZ]

Why would one offer them 100 mio for it if it's so worthless, for one.

For two, why is money such a big deal? If you love what you do and can provide for yourself with it, why whore yourselves out? It's not about being filthy rich, but doing what you love, right?

Re:WTF?

[reverseengineer]

Apparently, this same guy had a similar project called "Dodgeball" which Google bought out in 2005- and then killed in 2009 to replace with Google Latitude. I don't know how much he got for Dodgeball, but it may be that he really can afford to walk away from offers now. Both Dodgeball and "Foursquare" are/were location-based social networking services for mobile devices- Foursquare appears to tweak the concept by turning it into a sort of Zynga-style game where you earn awards for using the service. 100 million bucks for that.

Inaccurate title and summary

[noahm]

Foursquare hasn't turned down anything, as far as anybody knows. In fact, the Yahoo! buyout is still only rumor. The article is basically representing the opinion of some analyst entrepreneur. Quoting from the article:

Sometimes making a fortune is dumb, writes entrepreneur Charlie O'Donnell—which is why, O'Donnell adds, Foursquare will wisely walk away from a rumored $100 million offer from Yahoo.

Who's Charlie O'Donnell? What's his role in Foursquare? Is he really making statements on their behalf? I doubt it. Quoting from the photo caption later on,

[Photo: Laughing Squid's pic of Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley who, to be fair, may not have turned down anything yet.]

So, wtf? There's no story here, it's just some random dude repeating what some other random dude said would be a wise move.

not really a security risk

[SethJohnson]

A lot of people believe this to be the security risk. That a criminal will monitor a Loopt or Foursquare account to figure out when a house is unoccupied. In the real world, that's a far more sophisticated approach than what house burglars use.

Instead, they knock on the door of a house that appears unoccupied. If someone answers, they say, "Oh, I'm looking for my friend, Sally. Does she still live here?" If no one answers, then they proceed with the burglary. Finding empty houses does not require internet technology.

Seth