Twitter and Foursquare Partner to Provide Location Tagging in Tweets

The next time a user tweets that they’re working form a coffee shop or visiting a monument in D.C., the information will be powered by Foursquare.

On Monday, Twitter revealed that it would be partnering with Foursquare to power its tagged location data. Currently, Facebook and Yelp are the leaders in location data, allowing users to tag where they are and check in to receive deals and discounts. This heavy competition has prompted this new partnership between Twitter and Foursquare where both platforms are likely to benefit.

What kind of data does Foursquare have? Currently, Foursquare gets millions of API calls a day from 85,000 partners they work with. Foursquare’s data partners include Google’s Waze, Yahoo’s Flickr, Twitter’s Vine, Pinterest, and Microsoft’s mobile system Cortana. The platform has also received more than 7 billion check-ins to more than 65 million places all over the world. Foursquare users have uploaded 250 million photos and have left 70 million tips, with 90 million personal “tastes”. Of course, Foursquare benefits from this conglomeration of data from its users and partners and is able to provide a really robust database of location information as a result. As Foursquare CEO explains it, Foursquare’s platform has incorporated new technology that learns “how to see buildings the way our phones see them – as shapes and sensor readings on the ground rather than boxes viewed from space.” The platform has built software that claims to better understand when people move through, stop within, or move on to these “shapes,” whether it’s a place, neighborhood, or city. For example, rather than tagging a simple geographical location – e.g. “Chicago,” Foursquare’s technology gathers information from billions of user-generated check-ins to be more specific and contextual, e.g. “The Navy Pier”.

How will it look when you add a location to your Tweet? Twitter included a video showing how Foursquare will be powering location services:

Coming soon! We're working with @foursquare so you can tag specific locations in Tweets: https://t.co/MwlLz5Pfvq pic.twitter.com/jATzXvbuV6

— Twitter (@twitter) March 23, 2015

Since Foursquare is sitting on a mountain of very valuable, detailed and specific user data, it’s eager to share the data with it with Twitter, a social media giant willing to pay for it. What’s more, Foursquare gains little bits of insights around user preferences for every tweet published with a tagged location.

Foursquare’s vision is to be a powerful source of personal local search and recommendations. It seems that Foursquare is ahead of a trend and will likely power the data for many of these players in the social/local search arena.

What do you think about the new decision? Do you think this partnership will be something both platforms can benefit from?