When Forrester CEO George Colony, thrashed Foursquare as nonsense, Fred Wilson posted his talk on his web site and commented that “it shows he doesn’t use the product and has no idea what they are about and where they are headed”, when I asked him about his take on Mr. Colony’s view.

However, Mr. Colony might have a point, although he was unnecessarily harsh making it. After several months spending time on Foursquare, I sadly realized that I can get better value out of other web sites.

There were three ways that I hoped to get value.

Recommendations When I Travel

First and foremost, I was hoping that it would help me find cool places when I am traveling. Foursquare did deliver on this promise to some extent but sadly TripAdvisor (with a dash of Lonely Planet) is a lot more useful when abroad. It simply has more information. More importantly, it has more information in a language that I can understand. The few, if any, comments in Foursquare about a place are usually in the local language that I don’t understand. In Istanbul, the city where I live, this benefit diminishes because I can already find out about new places through other means.

Memories

My second reason was to keep a record of good times I spend with friends and family and share them with others. You know…check-in, attach a picture and a few lines of comments…Facebook with check-in along with the Timeline is much better for this purpose. The level of interaction with friends after you do a check-in is also so much higher in Facebook.

Run into Friends

Third was to find out if a friend is nearby. This happens so rarely that it’s not worth to keep checking in. I actually run into more people without the help of Foursquare than with it. Besides Facebook has the same functionality as well.

So despite desperately trying to find a place for Foursquare in my iPhone, I just could not justify it. Sadly, it lost the battle for my time to TripAdvisor+Lonely Planet when travelling and to Facebook when at home.

Check-in as a feature to the overall Facebook experience is much much better than what Foursquare offers. This makes me think that Foursquare is in somewhat of a trouble. I worry that there may be well established players at the destination they are headed.