You may already know that Foursquare location data powers Twitter, Uber, Apple, Pinterest and 100,000 other services. Today, we’re adding yet another technology juggernaut to that list with the announcement that Snap is partnering with Foursquare to utilize our location intelligence data.
Here’s how it works: At Foursquare, our place shapes data is best in class, with over 87 million places in our database. To translate how phones see the world, we triangulate signals such as wifi, bluetooth, GPS and more, and determine where a phone is located. We can accurately identify that a phone is in Gjelina in Venice, CA, or at Montana Ale Works, in Bozeman, or in La Boqueria market in Barcelona, Spain — and this helps us create our map of the world. Now that Snap has purchased our Places, they’ll be able to give Snapchatters better, more relevant Geofilters, and allow their advertisers more flexibility and creativity when they purchase Geofilters. (By the way, Foursquare is sending our Place Shapes data to Snapchat; we’re not getting user data back.)
Consider a surf brand. Now that we’re powering Snapchat Geofilters, the company could offer branded Geofilters at a chain of surf shops or at every beach in the U.S. Or a soda company may now purchase Geofilters across all fast food and convenience store locations. This opens up whole new categories of venues for Snap’s database, so Snapchat could offer Geofilters pegged to places like parks, farmers’ markets and speakeasies, all based on Foursquare venue shapes and our extensive categorization of places.
In case you’re curious, this is not the first time Snap and Foursquare have worked together. Foursquare was one of the first brands to advertise in the Discover channel with 0:10-second ads for the Foursquare Swarm check-in app. The ‘TFW You Become the Mayor’ ad campaign highlights the incredible rush you feel when you earn a mayorship at a pizza place, dry cleaner, gym and convenience store.
Passionate about the future of food, travel, mobile or location intelligence? Foursquare is hiring. Join us!
