Super interesting to see Foursquare expand its app ecosystem over the past few years. They're sitting on a ton of a useful, proprietary data that can be used interesting ways (see this article on how Foursquare predicted Chipotle's sales based on foot traffic).
@dens - why not build Marsbot functionality into the OG Foursquare app or Swarm?
@oliverwaters@marissachacko@cdohertyk@rrhoover@dens The use of SMS was hotly debated here at Foursquare. I find SMS on the iPhone much more straightforward than push notifications, but we all have busy Messages App, so we designed something that fits in really well in terms of how often it messages you. We'll be listening closely over the coming weeks to see how this aspect of Marsbot is received.
@maxsklar I was thinking more like Foursquare for Slack where the user would manually mention their location in the conversation. E.g “Mezcal cocktails in East Village”
Please, if you're gonna force users to verify using phone numbers, make sure you've covered all the country formats! The app detects automatically that I'm in Denmark (+45), but then it demands a XX-XX-XX format - you're missing two digits (I.e. XX-XX-XX-XX).
@vukovicnikola This is a very limited release right now - we're only accepting users in the United States.
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@maxsklar I think you should give non-US users some indication of this in the app. Right now it just seems like it's broken + builds wrong expectations
@roryoo Each recommendations comes with a link to the Foursquare page. You'll also be able to type "MORE" or "MORE DETAILS" and Marsbot will give you information on when it's open, the address, what people like there, etc. In the future, maybe we can support more questions.
What's happening in the background? When I say ' find a beer bar'. Right now, what's driving that one recommendation?
Also, why launch now? It seems to have a ways to go to be super useful to users. What's going to be the process to improve?
@coreyo If you search "find a beer bar", it'll run Foursquare's recommendation algorithm, and give you the top-listed result. You can text Marsbot and get a response (it's fun!) but we're not emphasizing that as the killer feature, since opening the Foursquare app would get you something similar. The main idea here is going to be how Marsbot begins to fill out your profile (in the notebook) automatically as you live your life, and then repackages notifications in a more lightweight and timely way. To improve over the coming weeks, we're going to look at the messages we're sending to users and find ways to increase the valuable ones and remove the less valuable ones.
@thomas_howard1 SMS is really difficult to do internationally. Dealing with the regulations and pricing alone would be a nightmare! I'm the only engineer on this full time so we can't have that right away - we're going to test and iterate on what we've got first.
@maxsklar yes, but I WANT to use my US number! However I'm locked into the country code based on my geo-location. Why can't I choose my country code?
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Plain text back and forth yet still iPhone only 😖 Was hoping part of the bot revolution would reduce the barriers to developing cross- platform first apps. Much less to consider when it comes to different design language, form factors, device specs, etc... but alas here we are...
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