On Tuesday location based service Foursquare announced that they now have 500,000 free merchants using their system and today they have revealed that business pages are now a self-serve option that any business can utilize.
Business owners looking to utilize the system can sign up for a free business page using their Twitter account login, at which point they can choose to share check-ins and tips with their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
The system also allows business owners to setup multiple manager accounts to expand their reach across different regions and even divisions of a company.
Before the new system was put in place the Foursquare development team had hand-code almost 3,000 brand pages for businesses.
At this time merchant accounts remain free with Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley recently telling reporters that the company doesn’t need to make money off those accounts at this time.
The system offer several benefits to company’s, first they can promote their tips while receiving real-time feedback through user comments, second they can receive followers to their page, allowing them to witness how far reaching their page campaigns have gone and businesses can also have entire teams of “managers” help develop their pages, ensuring a decent amount of content is built on a regular basis.
It should be noted that Foursquare does still charge for badge creation which leaves that option off the table for many small businesses at this time.
