Friday, March 27, 2015

Foursquare powering Twitter's location library

Twitter and Foursquare announced a partnership this week where Foursquare is powering location-tagging in tweets. Essentially Twitter users can now tag their specific location using Twitter's new Foursquare-powered location library. Foursquare claims to be the "location layer of the Internet" or "the system that crawls the world with people in the same way Google crawls web pages with machines." In the last 6 years they have seen 7 billion checkins, 65M places, 250M photos, and 70M tips. Foursquare is trying to get users to checkin and 'location tag' because it will help make their location layer platform better much like how Google and Bing make their search results better each time someone searches for something because of a continuous feedback loop. Powering Twitter's location library is a significant coup d'etat because, well, Twitter sees 500+ million tweets a day and that is usage that will just make Foursquare's library that many times better. Why is this relevant to advertisers? Adam Dorfman from SIM Partners explains in his article:
http://www.simpartners.com/twitter-foursquare-partner-geo-specific-locations/

"The Twitter/Foursquare relationship creates an opportunity for businesses (such as large enterprises with multiple locations) to create more location-relevant information, such as offers and recommendations. For instance, if you Tweet about the lunch you are having in the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco, the Banana Republic Twitter account that you follow just might want to let you know about a sale going on at the nearby Banana Republic in the Financial Center. But retailers are not the only brands that can benefit. For instance, a medical practice might share with you information about the doctors at its location depending on where you are and what you are doing."

Location is one of the last critical pieces of information advertisers need to truly advertise customers based on context which is likely the next vector after intent (Google) and interest (Facebook). This news helps jumpstart that vector in a real way.

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