Machine Learning and Big Data at FoursquareBlake Shaw, PhDData Scientist @ Foursquare@metablake

What is foursquare?

An app that helps you explore your city and connect with friends

A platform for location based services and data

What is foursquare?

People use foursquare to:• check in to places• discover new places• share w/ friends• get tips about places • get deals• earn points and badges• keep track of visits

What is foursquare?

Mobile Social

Local

10,000,000+ people

25,000,000+ places

1,000,000,000+ check-ins

10,000+ actions/second

Stats

Growth

Growth

Growth

Learning with location data

• Check-ins are a rich source of data that describe human behavior

• We apply machine learning algorithms to the collective movement patterns of millions of people to build exciting new services

Recommendation engine

•foursquare explore provides realtime recommendations using:• location• time of day• check-in history• friends preferences• venue similarities

Signals about places

Networks of people

Networks of people

Brooklyn

SFManha-an

Australia

Open questions

• How to measure similarity between people and places?• How to determine influence in large

networks of people and places?• What statistics can we use to describe

people’s behavior in the real-world?• How do we predict what information will be

timely and relevant to a user?

Our data stack

• MongoDB• Amazon S3, Elastic Mapreduce• Hadoop• Hive• Flume• R and Matlab

Join us!foursquare is hiring! 85+ people and growing

foursquare.com/jobs

Blake Shaw@metablakeblake@foursquare.com