Webb: Early social apps missed that their real breakthrough was location services
Amy Webb · Amy Webb on the forces transforming society right now | Masters of Scale · Mar 20, 2026 · at 4:18
Amy Webb, CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group, discusses why tracking superficial features rather than deeper infrastructure leads tech leaders to misunderstand technological shifts.
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“If you go back in time to the original crop of location-based network social media apps, so that would have been Foursquare, Gowalla, Scavenger, everybody got the trend wrong. The trend was not cool badges and people checking in, like, That, that wasn't the trend. The trend was location-based services baked into mobile and social networks”
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