It’s confirmed, Foursquare is currently in talks with the nets top search engines, including Google Microsoft and Yahoo.
Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley has told the Telegraph:
“Our data generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search,” while adding, “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.”
The companies best bet is probably Bing, with Microsoft typically the earliest adopter of new trending display options for their Bing search users. Microsoft also already had a deal in which tips from Foursquare users are embedded in Bing Maps. On the other hand Crowley sold his text messaging app Dodgeball to Google in 2005.
The move could give Foursquare more exposure is a market with plenty of competition including Gowalla and Yelp. Foursquare currently raised $95 million in investment capital and they have around 2 million users who could provide plenty of good material that can be utilized by search engines in real time.
What do you think Foursquare data could do for search engine display results? Leave us your thoughts.
