Foursquare May Form Partnership with Search Engines
Partnership Would Allow Real-Time Search Results
Foursquare is a mobile social networking application that allows users to "check-in" to locations when they arrive, offering them the opportunity to also tweet about their whereabouts. Foursquare awards a "mayorship" to the individual who visits a location the most in a 60-day time period, it also awards badges for completing certain tasks. Some businesses also offer visitors special deals or incentives for checking in using the service.
As people check-in at locations, Foursquare is gathering data about not only what businesses are in the area, but where people like to go. All that data could be very interesting to search engines, who could in turn show local search results of literally what locations are popular at the time.
"We can anonymise data and use it to show venues which are trending at that moment. Twitter helped the world and the search engines know what people are talking about. Foursquare would allow people to search for the types of place people are going to - and where is trending - not what." said Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare, in an interview with the Telegraph.
Foursquare has been growing rapidly, signing its two millionth member last week. One million of those members were acquired over just the past three months. The application gathers a substantial about of data about where people in an area like to go, when they visit businesses, and how often they return. All that data could be exceptionally useful to a search engine such as Google where visitors might search for restaurants, bars, or even something like tailors in the area and want to know what businesses are popular.
Twitter has struck a similar deal with both Yahoo and Google, allowing them to index tweets to provide more real-time search results. As of January 2010 Twitter had over 75 million unique worldwide users, substantially more than Foursquare's paltry 2 million.
Do you currently use Foursquare? Would you use Foursquare results in an internet search if available?
Published by Ann Mapleridge
Ann is tech geek, craft beer lover, and avid traveler. View profile
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- Foursquare is a mobile social networking application that allows users to "check-in" to locations
- Foursquare signed its two millionth member last week