CNN: "Dennis Crowley was jogging across a New York bridge when he spotted something exciting: a cartoon mushroom, spray-painted on the sidewalk.
It looked like something out of Nintendo's "Super Mario Bros.," which Crowley grew up playing. He stomped on the mushroom as he ran by and had a sort of nerdy realization.
"I was like, s---!" he recalled. " 'I should get a power-up for that!' "
Since that moment several years ago, Crowley -- a 33-year-old who's always in a sweatshirt and wears an eyebrow-length mop of Justin Bieber-like hair -- has sought to turn adult life into a whimsical game. In his world, people should earn points and prizes for making random discoveries like that one."
Snapchat and Foursquare have entered into a partnership to power location-based geofilters and enable more targeted advertising.
"Foursquare is not a consumer social app business, it’s a data company. And only when it admitted that to itself and revalued as such was it able to pull in more capital and keep chugging. Today at LA’s Upfront Summit, Foursquare’s lead investor from Union Square Ventures Fred Wilson stuck up for the startup while trying to make people understand how it’s changed."
Team communication app Slack has hired Foursquare executive Noah Weiss to head up a new Search, Learning, & Intelligence Group for Slack, which will be part of the well-funded startup's new New York office.
