Danthis is such a great example of unintentional benefits. strava the running app is now being quietly used by city planners: https://www.fastcodesign.com/90149130/strava-the-app-for-athletes-is-becoming-an-app-for-cities
"your seemingly mundane activity that you’re doing every day to get back and forth to work...has the potential to improve your quality of life in your city”
of course the risk of falling too far down the data for service hole is you end up like foursquare
jedmund@mil is that bad though? foursquare's data capability is their entire business now
@jedmund i'm sure it's great for foursquare's b2b business but I don't know anyone that still uses either of their apps anymore
@jedmund two trending places in syd (1 review), four in melbs, none anywhere else. it's dead in oz.
@mil oh, yeah foursquare only works in some places i guess. it works in the US and its been better in Japan lately
@jedmund but it had a user base outside these places and now it doesn't
@mil I'm willing to bet the split into two apps killed it in many non-US territories. They had a hard enough time pulling it off in the US on its own.
@jedmund i thought the split was smart at the time/still think it could have worked. but they systematically killed everything fun about the old app.