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MarsBot — Local recommendations based on where you go. By Foursquare.
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@rrhoover @dens I'd wager that the interesting thing here exactly is the dedicated app. It's basically the same Foursquare intelligence, delivered differently. Foursquare already sends passive notifications; Marsbot seems like a more powerful, more personable, more interactive version of that. Foursquare is about the content; Marsbot is dedicated to the discovery process. Then again, that's all conjecture!
@cdohertyk @rrhoover @dens We did discuss building into the OG apps, but felt that it would seem like a tacked on feature and get lost in amongst the other great features there. We wanted to try out a new app and a new communication style. Notifications (esp on iOS) tend to go into a black hole, plus there is little interaction you can have with them.
@marissachacko @cdohertyk @rrhoover @dens Notifications are dead, long live SMS! I dread the thought of the 'Messages' app becoming our new 'inbox'.
@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.
I am currently in India so it's picking up the correct country code +91 however it doesn't accept Indian mobile numbers (10 digits long) and neither does it let me change the country code. Basically I can't go past the enter your phone number screen...
Same situation here in the Netherlands. It's even formatting the number correctly, but "Next ->" simply doesn't work.
I cannot backspace to the country code to enter my US number, either.
(Yes, I know it's only useful in NYC and SF, but it'd be nice to pre-configure before my next trip.)
Doesn't seem to allow my UK number despite displaying +44. This is US only right now, right?
@janebersbach @xstex Sorry our bad ... accidentally published to UK store when should have been US only.
@janebersbach Sorry about that, you still seeing it? should have pulled by now
@janebersbach Thanks for letting us know, and again sorry about the mess up ... launch days can be crazy!
@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.
Love this concept! I've been playing around with @Text-Rex from The @Infatuation, and this sounds kinda similar.
@dens @foursquare @marsbot Let me in! Long-time Foursquare, Swarm (and Dodgeball) user here. ;)
Unfortunately, there is a waitlist. Few companies actually have proprietary data that could be helpful. I'm really looking forward to trying this out
This looks great - excited to try it out right now - we actually build something similar but it's just a phone number http://clemo.nyc/ 😋 All the best guys!
@snk I find Swarm and Foursquare to be two of the most useful apps I have installed. If you don't like Foursquare, I'm not sure why Marsbot would be any more useful.... it's just a different interface.
I have over 10,000 check ins so I'm really happy to test this! can't wait to get past the waitlist
@sup Nice! For now, this app is like a clean-slate with respect to your checkins. In order to simplify our work (and the message), Marsbot doesn't peek at your Swarm data. But it learns pretty quickly (within a few weeks) your habits. It'd be interesting to think about how we can integrate Swarm checkins in the future.
Couldn't this service simply be a number that you text instead of having to download a dedicated app?
@tollerton It is a number that you text, but we need the app in order to get your location.
@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”
@tollerton that's how it was in the beta. Alas you can't give SMS apps your location!
@tollerton It wouldn't be impossible to build that version - though texts about places you're at now (without manually texting it) wouldn't be possible, and you'd have to manually input your notebook information. Just doing queries with location could work really well, so if that aspect of it becomes popular this is a possibility.
@lukamarr If iOS goes well we should be able to spin up android quickly, but since we've been live for less than 2 hours hard to predict ...
"Marsbot quietly pays attention to the places you bring your phone"
What a huge change from the company that trained us to check-in and publicly declare our presence.
Now they're automatically recording our location and offering us private value on that data
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