Foursquare Checks In on Open Graph
Category: Travel & Local
Android
iOS
Web
“
Our sign-up rate went up 50% when we implemented Facebook Login.
”
— Noah Weiss, Foursquare Product Manager
Foursquare
/
City: New York
App Center
When Foursquare, one of the leading location-based social media companies, wanted to improve the experience and distribution of its app, it looked to the Facebook Open Graph. After adding Facebook Login and integrating with action links and mention tagging in the Open Graph, Foursquare was able to raise product awareness and increase their conversion rate by 50%.
We sat down with Noah Weiss, Product Manager, to find out what Foursquare's developers have done — and plan to do — with Facebook.
Create easy signup using Facebook Login
Foursquare's original three-step signup required people to add layers of data (including email and passwords) to join Foursquare, a process that yielded a conversion rate of 60%. These extra steps proved to be even more challenging for people on mobile.
Foursquare continued to iterate its login approach to optimize user acquisition and moved to one-click signup with Facebook Login. Once people authenticate Foursquare with their Facebook account, they are immediately a Foursquare user, without the need to populate any additional fields. After migrating the primary sign up from a multiple-step process to a single click using Facebook Login, the new user conversion rate jumped to 90%.
To move to single click, Foursquare made its required fields—that it couldn't guarantee to get from the Facebook user object—optional. Foursquare shifted from its initial strategy of having multiple required fields and began asking for this information from onboarded users over a longer time period.
By using Facebook Login, people can quickly see which Facebook friends also use Foursquare and add them on the spot to their Foursquare network.
Quickly incorporate the newest Facebook features
Foursquare's first foray into using Facebook helped improve its user conversion rate. Foursquare also used the latest Facebook platform updates, including mention tagging and shared Open Graph actions, to better integrate Facebook with its actual product.
Foursquare was among the first apps to publish to the Open Graph. Facebook Open Graph enables people to publish stories about how they use an app to the Facebook news feed. When other people see these stories, they often choose to interact with them. Upon interacting with Open Graph stories, people are presented with an opportunity to download and sign up for the app.
To integrate more closely with Facebook, Foursquare added the Open Graph mention tagging feature. Mention tagging is best when people are doing activities where they want to mention friends. When people mention a friend in Foursquare, the story on Facebook links the person's name to their timeline, and their friend will receive a notification. The story will also be added to the friend's timeline or, if enabled, to timeline review. No privacy changes are associated with the mention tagging feature.
People on Foursquare can also mention tag any Facebook friend - even if that friend is not on Foursquare. This function enables them to create more awareness of the service, along with the ability to convert new potential users.
Foursquare recognized that mention tagging requires a great user interface to allow people to easily add and remove tags to their message. This is particularly important for mobile apps with limited screen space.
On mobile, when someone is typing a friend's name, Foursquare shows a label they can tap to easily add/remove the mention tag.
Using more social plugins
Initially, Foursquare's key feature was its location check-in. To help drive downloads and conversion, Foursquare looked closely at how people interacted on its app and on Facebook and made changes.
Early on, Foursquare added more social plugins, including the Facepile plugin, on landing pages. Foursquare understood the social context and advantages of people seeing which friends are connected and which ones had been to a particular place and checked in. By adding social plugins and badges, Foursquare had much more visibility - and in multiple places - on Facebook.
Integrating with Facebook gave Foursquare the ability to tap into the Facebook social graph to power better recommendations, friend connections, and customer insight.
Foursquare stats
- 4 million Facebook-connected users
- More than 3 billion check-ins
- 1 million businesses using the Merchant Platform
Related documentation
Updated about 6 months ago