It's been an interesting week for Foursquare, the location-based social networking site.
On Sunday, Foursquare might have been referenced on an episode of "The Simpsons" that was filled with Twitter and Facebook references. On Monday, TechCrunch reported that Digg founder Kevin Rose outed himself as an investor in Foursquare while he was at the Future of Web Apps conference in London. And on Tuesday, Foursquare announced that London will be added to the growing list of cities where its service is available.
Through a tweet, Foursquare announced that it will be bringing the service to London this week. This is Foursquare's second European city. Amsterdam was first, but London is a whole different animal. London is the top Twitter-using city in the world, so people may be open to a new social service like Foursquare.
Meanwhile, Rose is the latest Foursquare seed round investor to go public. Last week, it was revealed that Twitter creator Jack Dorsey was part of the round, along with Union Square Ventures and others still undisclosed. Rose's involvement definitely adds some star power to a service that has been growing in popularity. Rose's investment was revealed through a slide in his FOWA presentation that can be seen in a video of his talk at 50 seconds in.
Finally, Sunday brought some fun news for Foursquare. A new episode of "The Simpsons" includes a scene in which Lisa remarks: "Nobody even plays foursquare anymore, they just gossip." It's a pretty loose reference, but some people believe "The Simpsons" gave a nod to Foursquare.
MIAMI--Virgin used Alex Hunter's presentation at the Future of Web Apps to announce its new Virgin.com website, due to enter closed beta in the next six weeks. The new site will include a lot of social features that allow users to upload and interact with content published to various sections of the site. Sample sections include entrepreneurship and entertainment.
In addition to the new social features, Virgin is implementing an incentive system on the site to encourage users to upload and interact. Points earned through this system will go not only towards a user's rank on the site, but can also be put towards physical goods since, as Hunter said, "Everyone likes free shit."
Virgin also announced that they have reached agreements with a few personalities to produce content for the site. Those announced include WineLibrary's Gary Vaynerchuk (who is speaking at FOWA later today), Virgin's own Richard Branson, and FOWA organizer, Ryan Carson.
Another interesting tidbit that was revealed towards the end of Hunter's presentation is that Virgin is working on a Facebook Connect implementation for their planes. So, in theory, your friends on Facebook could see that you are sitting in seat 5D, watching Diggnation, and drinking a Coke. There are, of course, a lot of interesting possibilities with this. The system could potentially show passengers if any of their friends are also on board so that they could send them a drink or go say hi.
Virgin has, historically, been on the cutting edge of adopting technology and it's great to see that they are taking some steps forward with social media as well.
MIAMI--Jason Fried of 37signals kicked off the Future of Web Apps conference here with a bang earlier Tuesday.
37signals is known for making project management and collaboration software for the Web. It also features a pricing model for its products, which is somewhat unique for a provider of Web applications.
Jason told the crowd here today that "free is not the future of business." He stressed to the Web app developers and entrepreneurs in attendance that they need to start charging for their applications and that free is not the way to go.
Fried went on to say that it is rare that a company can sustain itself on a free-based strategy and that a pay-based competitor will be able to outlast them.
Especially in these tougher economic times, companies need to make money. Charging for applications is a great way to do it. That's not to say that charging is for everyone, but when applicable, people will pay for a high-quality product like 37signals' Basecamp.
Fried also discussed releasing the byproducts of one's work, as his company has done with Ruby on Rails, which came about as a result of the development of Basecamp.
What do you think? Is free the "future of failure," as Fried suggests, or is it here to stay?
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