Foursquare's New Source of Revenue

Foursquare has decided to launch a pilot program to assess paid ads. Similar to tweeters idea of promoted tweets, Foursquare in introducing the Promoted Updates as a new inflow of revenue for the business. It is the next reasonable step to take. The promoted deals, which Foursquare compares to the Google Inc. ads, which appear at the side of search results, will run in a pilot program for various months.

Customers will receive updates according to their location, the time of day, and to whether users or their friends’ have showed any interest in the business. So, they will be especially targeted depending on one’s ‘likes’ and ‘check-ins’ and they will only appear when users open the 'Explore' tab to find places of interest nearby.

There are around 20 advertisers that will take part, including Best Buy, Walgreens, Gap, Hertz, Hilton Hotels, and J.C. Pennny. Companies were handpicked and they'll be able to use the paid-ads feature to share information about their store or offer deals, which might entice you to stop by.

Even if Foursquare faces competition from Facebook and Twitter in trying to get more social-media advertising onto mobile devices, I believe it is time they do so. The possibility has been here for a while now, so why not try it out and attempt to capture a slice of the mobile-advertising market?