Smartphone Business Model: Boring is Death

The rapid, global spread of smartphones is enabling new and highly disruptive business models.   These are permanently altering commerce and wealth. Today we look at…Boring is Death

Foursquare has nothing to fear. Not even Facebook itself.

The size, scope and daily use of Facebook means that Facebook Places, which combines user location (check-in) with their Facebook friends and social graph, will destroy lesser location-based services. Not Foursquare. I expect Foursquare to actually benefit from Facebook Places because it's going to be much easier for Facebook users, which number in the hundreds of millions, to learn about, sign in and use the very well-made, well-positioned (I make joke) Foursquare.

I do not check-in. I do not play location-based (LBS) games. However, for you dear reader, I have been playing with a number of LBS apps. These include Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Yelp and others. (I do not include Groupon here as I believe that is a different type of service.) Hands-down, and it isn't even close, Foursquare is more robust, more intuitive, easier to use; game play, if you wish to call it that, is simpler and more fun. Loopt, for example, I don't think they're even trying. It is needlessly difficult to figure out.

But Foursquare has the entire process down cold. It's easy for new users to sign-up and understand how to check-in. Businesses have a fairly simple process in registering and jumping on board. The app itself looks pretty. As long as Foursquare continues to draw in more businesses, more third-party developers, more users, and I see no reason why they will not, then Facebook Places is a net win for them.

What might kill Foursquare? We all come to our senses. Though I doubt it. The company is building out its infrastructure, wisely bringing its enemy, Facebok Places, closer, continues to work on improving its UI, has opened up the service for developers and makes it very easy and very simple for businesses to wade in. More than this, however, Foursquare is riding several trends that are permanently reshaping business and wealth.

The first, of course, is that they live, thrive, really, on the smartphone. The smartphone is the computer. It is the future of the web. Another is that Foursquare is leveraging one of the new tenents of our world during the smartphone wars: space becomes increasingly irrelevant while concurrently, our location, in real-time, becomes increasingly relevant. We can work and play and watch and access and buy and sell and learn and connect from any place, any time. This is liberating the marginalized and enabling entirely new global connections. Yet it is also driving a human need to interact with their immediate personal environment. Coupled with social media, this is ratcheting up our desire to share our personal environment, view and circumstances with others, to help them understand what we are experiencing. And making us feel, in a word, closer.

Foursquare is also capitalizing on the ability, now that the mobile web has become so pervasive, and so many have smartphones, that lets individuals level the playing field against business. We can instantly check for the best deals, the best price, the best service, the highest recommendations; no matter where we are, or when we are there.

Lastly, and one of the core business model trends I follow, is that Foursquare is at the forefront of the trend I label 'boring is death.' This is a new business model that can only fully exist now, at the beginning of the smartphone wars. Combining the smartphone, real-time location-based information, social media and the mobile web, humans are now able to never be bored. Ever. We need not ever go without our favorite book, or music or video. We can always search, always connect. We can always play games, complete work, engage with others, wherever they are, wherever we are, and no matter what we are doing otherwise. For all the typically false statements that boredom is good, that boredom fosters creativity, boredom is simply not a state of being that humans embrace. Rather, it is a state of being thrust upon us.

Now, we have the tools to fight back. Foursquare is one of the most visible examples of this. Boring is death. Why be bored? Why not interact? Why not...play? Check-in, grab a coupon, tell the world where you are, tell the world about the business you are visitng, play a game, get rewarded, receive instant feedback; stay distracted. True, it sounds, well, if not tedious, certainly, insipid. So what? Better that than bored.

[Note: In my TECHNOLOGY RANKINGS, Foursquare has scored very high.]