Foursquare · Product sense · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

Keeping Foursquare rewards motivating

Foursquare is a mobile app where people check in to real world places and share their activity with friends. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Product sense
User segmentation
Engagement strategy
Prioritization
Metric design

The situation

You are a PM on Foursquare's consumer team. The Head of Product asks you to recommend how to keep repeat check ins motivating as the service moves beyond its earliest fans. Foursquare has built excitement with location based badges, and new users still enjoy unlocking them. But the team is worried about a lifecycle problem: some active users have already collected many of the obvious rewards, while newer users may feel they are arriving after the most exciting milestones are no longer special. The company wants an engagement system that keeps the product fun and social without turning it into a confusing game that distracts from the core habit of checking in to places. Why now: sustaining repeat usage matters more as the audience broadens past early adopters and the novelty of the first reward loop starts to fade. The hard part is choosing what kind of motivation should come next, novelty, social status, local competition, or something else, while staying true to Foursquare's real world use case. Assume you have only basic cohort, retention, and feature usage trends, not a full research report.

What to produce

Write a 1 to 2 page product strategy memo.

Your answer must

Identify the main user segments affected by the current engagement loop, and say which segment you would prioritize first.
Explain why the current reward system may weaken over time, and connect that to repeat usage or retention risk.
Recommend one primary product direction, with enough detail to show the user behavior it is meant to drive.
Compare your recommendation against at least one credible alternative and explain the trade off.
Define success metrics, including at least one repeat usage or retention metric and one guardrail metric, and outline a simple test or rollout plan.

Constraints

Stay within Foursquare's existing check in and social product area.
Do not rely on cash rewards, broad merchant partnerships, or a full app redesign.
Your proposal should make sense for both existing active users and later adopters.

Format

Use short headings and bullets. A small table for segments, options, and metrics is welcome.

How Foursquare actually played it

Breaks down how Foursquare moved from badges to mayorships to keep users engaged, and why status rewards decay as early users unlock them. Good lesson on gamification lifecycles.

Rewards lose meaning once users unlock them
Add new status layers for later adopters

Built from The foursquare Engagement Evolution by Casey Winters.