Spin Valley Post

With Foursquare seeing fast growth and starting to be embraced by elements of the mainstream (like their new deal with Bravo), it might be decision time.

A popular part of the gaming element of the service is gaining badges, virtual tokens that show you’ve done a certain task on the service. Most of these are clever, like the Photogenic badge when you check-in to three different places with photobooths. But some are a bit more risqué, like the Douchebag badge. As Foursquare keeps growing, will there be pressure to get rid of these?

Increasingly, this issue is being brought up on Foursquare’s Get Satisfaction page. As one user wrote yesterday in the forum:

Has it occurred to the too-cool-for-school hipsters at foursquare that unlocking a “douchebag” badge for your fans because they check in at places like Barneys might:
1. Be insulting to your users, especially if have chosen to share their badges with friends and
2. Might also be insulting to your future customers and business partners like Barneys?

Total FAIL, guys. Who are you to judge what your customers like and don’t like?

Another user follows that up with:

I agree, it is also offensive to me and I suspect many others. What’s next, “Asshole” and “Dickhead” badges? At a minimum, users should be allowed to delete/block such an offensive badge in their profile.

A week ago, another thread was started raising the same issue:

I’m surprised to have unlocked the “douchebag” badge by checking in to a trendy hotel and must admit that I find the badge name rather offensive. What’s the point of it and why use such a crude name?

Editorial comment: If you’re trying to build a service that’s going to be appealing to more than just the uber-geeky among us, don’t y’all think that, just maybe, you should screen some of the words involved with the service?

That actually ties in very well with what Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley told Bits today while talking about the Bravo deal:

Bravo’s shows really overlap with our users and a new mainstream audience that we want to reach. I don’t think check-ins are a nerd-only experience. It’s about sharing content and experiences with others.

While the Douchebag badge may have been fine for the “nerd-only” crowd, they’re clearly starting to move beyond that, and some users are getting upset about it.

And while you might not see why this is much of an issue, coincidentally, I ran into this issue last night. I have my Foursquare account set up to auto-tweet out when I unlock new badges. Last night, I happened to be at a bar tagged as a “douchebag” bar, so when I checked-in, I unlocked the badge and it automatically tweeted out to all my followers.

For the record, I think the Douchebag badge is hilarious, and could care less that it tweeted out. But I certainly can see how that could be an issue for some people. To a lesser extent, the same is true with the Crunked badge (4 or more stops in one night, implying you’re drunk — which is probably true) and others.

Also, what happens when a venue doesn’t like that they’ve been tagged as a “douchebag” place?

This brings up an interesting dilemma for Foursquare: do they abandon some of the fun, quirky things that made the service what it is, in an attempt to go mainstream?

[thanks malachi]

Applications that looked amazing on larger multi-touch experiences like Microsoft Surface may have a more affordable consumer-facing counterpart. While the iPad has been widely criticized, many startups are thrilled by its possibilities. In mid-November we featured Paris-based Pearltrees as a new design interface for remapping web information. We spoke to CEO Patrice Lamothe to hear his thoughts on the release of the iPad.

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Pearltrees is a new way of organizing information where users create mindmap-style visualizations of their favorite websites and web-based media. Each “pearl” or media node can have multiple branches and depending on how you want to arrange your pearls, you can drag and drop them to any branch point to suit your needs. Rather than scrolling through a linear hierarchy of bookmarks, users can delve into different branches of a pearltree. Naturally, this type of data visualization lends itself to the touch capabilities of the iPad.

Says Lamothe, “The idea of physically touching and moving items on a screen is in the DNA of Pearltrees. We won’t need to change much to the interaction design to make it suitable for the iPad.”

Nevertheless, while Lamothe sees the potential in the tablet’s touch interface, the fact that the device does not currently support Flash is a problem for the CEO. While many argue that Apple’s omission of Flash support is in favor of HTML 5, there’s no denying that lack of Flash would hinder the consumer experience. The plethora of pre-existing Flash apps and sites are inaccessible save for Adobe’s workarounds.

Says Lamothe, “I believe tablets can open up an entirely new field, something I would call ‘casual browsing’. It’s a really simple way to get information, browse the Web, enjoy content, play games and communicate with friends. It’s something you will do at home, in cafes, during your holidays – basically when you have a bit of leisure time. To be the perfect casual browser, the IPad would need a more open architecture, Flash, a camera and a few other features…In any case, it’s an exciting new way to enjoy the Web.”

Discuss

A new development in the Amazon vs. Macmillan fiasco. Amazon just posted an announcement indicating that will be “capitulating” to Macmillan by selling the publishers’ books for their desired prices.

Macmillan is trying to price their e-books at $15, while Amazon prices e-books at $9.99. Macmillan’s CEO John Sargent said that unless Amazon sets the price of new e-books to $15, the publisher will not distribute new books to Amazon when they are released. On Friday, Amazon basically banned titles, both paper and digital, published by Macmillan by refusing to directly sell them. And Macmillan took out an ad in the Publishers Marketplace magazine protesting the tactics being used by Amazon regarding pricing.

Amazon is now giving into Macmillan’s demands because of the publisher’s monopoly over its titles. In a passive aggressive manner, Amazon says that readers will decide whether its reasonable to pay $14.99 for e-books. And that other publishers will compete by offering their books and lower prices.

Here is Amazon’s announcement:

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

I sat down with Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week to talk about his business.

Brightcove isn’t the sexiest startup out there. They’re a video platform – giving websites the tools they need to host and stream video, for a fee ranging from $100/month to “six figures per year” for the largest customers. For the most part users never see the Brightcove brand. And Allaire is just fine with that. He just wants happy customers.

The company launched in 2005, has raised just over $90 million in venture capital, and is approaching profitability, he says. Allaire says he wants to build a public company, and is happy being based in Boston.

Brightcove competes with newer upstarts like Ooyala, although Allaire says Brightcove remains the strongest company in its space. Another competitor, Maven Networks, was acquired by Yahoo in 2008 for around $160 million. The product was unceremoniously shut down by Yahoo a year later. Allaire says they picked up most of Maven’s customers.

You can see the full interview above. And don’t miss the outtake at the end of the video where Allaire gives some free tech support to a customer. Time Inc. reporter Barbara Kiviat was having some issues uploading a video.

Back in October, Google changed the mobile navigation space when it launched Google Maps Navigation for Android. While the product itself is solid it also has one killer feature: it’s free. This has forced the makers of other non-free navigation tools to scramble to convince users their products are still worth paying for. Verizon is the latest to do so with its VZ Navigator 5, launching tomorrow.

So what would make it worth paying for? Verizon has a few new features in this latest update, but one of the ones they are touting the most is social media integration. Specifically, you can now update your Facebook status by way of VZ Navigator. This in and of itself isn’t that interesting, but you can also send out your location to Facebook with this feature, apparently.

While Facebook has yet to launch any major location functionality itself, a few third parties including Yahoo’s Fire Eagle and Nokia have leveraged the network for their location-based products. But VZ Navigator’s Facebook integration might be the most meaningful yet, as we could actually see people who use the service sending their location to their friends on Facebook. In other words, customers could start using this integration to make Facebook more like the popular location services such as Foursquare.

Of course, unlike the popular location services, VZ Navigator isn’t free. Using it will cost you $9.99 a month or $2.99 for 24-hours of usage. But with that price you also get other features, namely turn-by-turn navigation. With this new version, Verizon has also added new “enhanced” points of interest that show up on their maps with details about the place. There is also now crowd-sourced traffic information that Verizon claims will make traffic reports more timely and accurate. Overall, the look and feel of the application has been updated as well.

Another nice feature is that if you need roadside assistance, you can send your location and number with the click of a button.

VZ Navigator 5 will be available tomorrow for the BlackBerry Curve 8530, the LG enV Touch, the HTC Touch Pro2, and the Samsung Omnia. The plan it to roll it out to other smartphones on Verizon’s network in the coming weeks, we’re told. Verizon builds VZ Navigator in association with TeleCommunication Systems.