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Dennis Crowley, CEO Foursquare, Quits Job

By Kanika Gupta | Update Date: Jan 22, 2016 01:36 PM EST

Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare has announced his resignation from the post of chief executive of the company, that started as a local social check-in tool, as it attempts to regain the old buzz. Jeff Glueck, COO of Foursquare will be taking over as the company's CEO as Crowley steps down and take the position of an executive chairman. However, what hurt the company most was its valuation. Union Square Ventures who released a new funding round of $45 million today also indicated that the company has lost almost half its value since 2013, dropping from $650 million, according to The New York Times.

The situation came up as a moment of truth for Crowley who said that it was impossible to turn Foursquare into the next multi-billion-dollar social network. "Everyone thought we were going to be the company that toppled Facebook, which is crazy talk," Crowley told The New York Times in an interview. There is hope, he says. "We're building a really amazing, very scalable business around the many successful products we've built that people love." For now, Foursquare boasts 50 million users monthly and more than 100,000 developers who are happy to pay for that treasure trove of data, as reported by The Verge

The strongest effort made by Crowley to kick start Foursquare came in 2014 when the company split its check-in feature and made it available exclusively on an app, Swarm. The idea was to position Foursquare as a Yelp contender centered around finding new places nearby while Swarm also had the core social features offered by the original app. The launch didn't click with the users and the company has been struggling ever since to grow their business. It is uncertain what Glueck plans for the company, but according to Crowley "it's important for Foursquare to be run by executives who have previous experience scaling companies," says Business Insider

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