Foursquare’s co-founder Dennis Crowley claims the company is in talks with major companies in the search space, including giants such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
“Our data generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search,” Crowley said to Telegraph. “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.”
This reminds us of Twitter’s search deal with Google and Microsoft, which brought Twitter users’ status updates to Google Search and Bing.
Microsoft in particular has been very interested to adopt third-party data into Bing, and it wouldn’t surprise us to see Foursquare making a deal with Microsoft first. The two companies already have a deal which puts tips from Foursquare users on Bing Maps. On the other hand, Crowley has connections with Google reaching back to 2005, when he sold the text messaging app Dodgeball to the search giant.
Unlike Twitter who, despite being pitted against dozens of clones, was always the leader in its space, Foursquare has strong competitors such as Gowalla and Yelp breathing down its neck. Foursquare is a great service, but it’s not the only option for a search deal with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others. However, having recently raised capital at a $95 million valuation, and reaching a user base of about 2 million members, things are looking good for the NYC-based company.
More About: foursquare, Google, microsoft, Yahoo
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