As social media becomes more and more mainstream companies have started focusing their efforts at making the platforms more interesting. With features like location sharing, companies can better connect you with other people and establishments easier than previously before. One of the major companies for location sharing is Foursquare. Foursquare is a local search and discovery app which can provide users with search results such as taking in account the places a user goes as well as where the user’s friends go. It can then provide users with recommendations for places they might like based on the user’s location at that moment. Exploding into popularity as a simple check-in game you would use with friends has now become more of a location search engine. After splitting the app into two, Foursquare created the app Swarm which was primarily used as the location search app to find places near you such as restaurants. Although having many familiar features as the original app, Swarm has not done so well as its twin. Because of this, it seems Foursquare will now venture into more of an enterprise space to find better profits for its company rather than focusing its full attention toward consumers.
Recently announced, Foursquare has said that Jeff Glueck the companies COO would now be its new CEO with founder Dennis Crowley taking on an executive chairman role. The companies shift toward enterprises has been something that Foursquare has been focusing on for the past 18 months. Signing major companies such as Apple, Twitter, Pinterest, and many others as their customers, the company says that they just had their biggest “revenue month, quarter and year”. Along with these major companies and having over 100,000 developers relying on their location data, Foursquare is sure to see growth in profit this year.
Jeff Glueck did go on to say that even though their consumer apps Foursquare and Swarm have over 50 million monthly active users and daily check-ins, their majority of revenue came from their B2B focuses Pinpoint and Enterprise Solutions. Pinpoint, which is a programmatic ad platform along with Enterprise Solutions, which is a location analytics tool (also known as Place Insights) for developers, “grew revenues 170 percent and 160 percent respectively in 2015.” The ad platform Pinpoint, for example, can be used to find out if you attend the same sports bar 3 times a month and then, in turn, helping an alcohol company send you an ad recommending a brand of alcohol. This will help companies and consumers to better connect with each other without having to meet face to face. While Foursquare is focusing more of its efforts and services toward enterprise, consumers will not see the last of Foursquare. After all, with major companies like Apple and Twitter on board, there will surely be more of Foursquare in these platforms.