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Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley spoke at the New York Tech Meetup about some of his plans for the company’s store of data. He showed a digital map of all of the daily check-ins across Manhattan, color-coded by category. Crowley said that using this data, he can predict what a user will like in one city based on what they liked in another city.

In the future, Crowley hopes to have location-based notifications where merchants can put out offers that get pushed to the user when they are nearby the business. They have this feature already for when users check-in to the businesses.

Xconomy

Foursquare (Photo credit: brennanMKE)

The updated Android app for Foursquare features recommendations for popular restaurants, shops and tourist destinations. The recommendations will pop up when the app is opened and will be available in a searchable format for both locals and tourists.

Cnet says that this is part of the shift from a check-in based social network to more of a comprehensive search engine.

Cnet

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CEO Dennis Crowley announced at the SXSW 2013 conference that Foursquare can retain data from users without them even checking in to businesses. Instead, the company wants to maintain itself as a search engine relying on data sent through its API. Among the 40,000 API users are Vine, Instagram, and Path and there are 50 million points of interests in its database that other applications using API can access.

For example Foursquare can track someone who posts a photo to Instagram from one location in the morning and another at night and retain the data.

Of the app’s 30 million individual users and 1 million merchant users, about 65 percent are outside the United States.

Social Times

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Foursquare has now added a button to their site that allows members to share venue links with other non-members through the generation of a URL that doesn’t require logging in. It’s a step towards the company becoming an open ratings and local search platform, the cost of which would cost the loss of the location data from an estimated 3 billion check-ins from users.

Social Times

Foursquare (Photo credit: brennanMKE)

Foursquare announced new updated to it’s Android application which will include helping make it easier for users to find nearby spots and friends through it’s main map, engadget reports. They have moved the “To-Do List” function to the left side and the “Check In” button to the bottom corner. The most recent version is currently live, but Foursquare will have new changes over the next few weeks.

Engadget.com

PC World

AM New York

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In a new deal with Voice Media Group, Foursquare gets access to content from alternative papers including the Village Voice and LA Weekly. Foursquare will receive listings, reviews and other content for local business in top markets, including NY, LA, Denver, Phoenix, Dallas and six other cities. MediaPost reported that VMG will syndicate its “Best Of” features to Foursquare and create badges for check-in locales. Foursquare’s content will also appear on VMG’s “Voice Places” review and recommendation platform – complete with trending data and check-in tips.

MediaPost

Foursquare

The company has a burn rate of $2 million a month and with its 2012 revenue of $2 million, it risks running out of cash. But backer Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures says the company won’t be sold off in a fire sale. He told Crain’s that the startup will be raising money soon and will be profitable “in the next year or two.” But analysts aren’t so sure. They believe Foursquare’s glory days are over and people have moved on while other companies including Facebook, Google+ and Yelp have beefed up their location-based services. Sam Hamadeh of PrivCo, predicts it won’t be able to raise funds and will be sold. A company with such a high valuation, he said, should have explosive grow.

Crain’s New York Business

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NY-based Foursquare and NASA have teamed up, creating a new “Curiosity Explorer” badge. The Mars rover unlocked the badge—from the red planet. Earthlings can also get a Curiosity Explorer badge by liking NASA on Foursquare and checking in at a science museum, planetarium or NASA visitor center.

Curiosity is also the mayor of Mars’ Gale Crater and Rocknest and is active on Twitter and Facebook.

The Next Web

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In a privacy policy update, Foursquare announced they would start making more user data public. Starting January 28, the full name of the user will be displayed on the service and venues will have more access to user data. Venues could previously see only 3 hours of customer info, but now will have access to a longer time period. The NY-based Foursquare, however, did not disclose the length of time.

Foursquare did say that users can alter the “full name” in their settings and can opt out of letting venue owners access their check-in data.

CNET

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Foursquare says the best recommendations come from friends–and it now will use Facebook’s data to boost its business.The NY-based location service said in a blog post, “By expanding your recommendations to include your Facebook friends who are on Foursquare, you’ll get even better personalized insights when you’re deciding where to go, while still only sharing check-in with your close friends.” Memeburn reports that the company says users’ check-in privacy will continue. Users will be prompted before check-ins are posted to Facebook and friends who aren’t added to Foursquare can’t see where you are.

Memeburn

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Apple is in discussions to incorporate NY-based Foursquare’s local data into its mapping app. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is in talks with several companies, including Yelp, to improve the map service, which had a flawed release in September. Speculation about a deal grew after Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president, reportedly posted a check-in on Twitter.

The Journal writes that these talks are a strategic shift for Apple as it builds up its own direct local information base and bypasses Google. A deal would also benefit Foursquare. The company’s growth has slowed as other social media companies—including Facebook—have created similar apps.

The Wall Street Journal

Hurricane Sandy’s impact (credit: David Berkowitz)

Business Insider chronicled the top 18 defining moments of the 2012 NY Tech scene. Things that stood out include Kevin Ryan’s departure as Michelle Peluso, former CMO of Citigroup, becomes the new CEO of Gilt Groupe. Zynga’s $180 million purchase of OMGPOP’s mobile game, Draw Something. Gigaom figured out that Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai left the company after it noticed investors buying his stock options. Buddy Media’s $690 million acquisition by Salesforce, one of the biggest in NY tech history. CT-based Kayak went public with a $1 billion valuation and less than four months later it was bought by Priceline for $1.8 billion. Even though it was one of the iPad’s biggest selling news apps, The Daily folded. But probably the biggest news of all was Hurricane Sandy, which hit the city–and the tech sector–hard, flooding homes and offices, knocking out power and displacing thousands.

Business Insider

Dennis Crowley (Photo credit: jdlasica)

According to The New York Post, Foursquare ranks third in mobile apps–behind only Facebook and Twitter. The NY-based startup founded by Dennis Crowley has more than 10.4 million unique monthly visitors, according to a Nielsen report. That’s a 118% increase from last year. Pinterest was the fastest-growing social network, with a 1,000% increase in online visitors over the last year. Facebook led all social networks, both online and mobile.  But Google+ is on the rise. Its app ranked forth on the list, with 9.7 million mobile users.

The New York Post

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – OCTOBER 18: Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley speaks during the 2011 Web 2.0 Summit on October 18, 2011 in San Francisco, California.(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley told Kara Swisher of All Things Dthat his company is without power and most of his employees are working in Brooklyn due to Hurricane Sandy. In a candlelit interview, he said their SoHo offices are inaccessible and the building is locked and the elevators aren’t working.

Other startup companies including Brooklyn’s Etsy are also out of power and everyone is organizing to find workspaces. Meanwhile, Foursquare’s San Francisco office is keeping everything going.

All Things D

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – OCTOBER 18: Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley speaks during the 2011 Web 2.0 Summit on October 18, 2011 in San Francisco, California. The 2011 Web 2.0 Summit features keynote addresses by Internet and Technology leaders and runs through Wednesday. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley has always passed on acquisition offers. In the past he may have “looked back” but doesn’t now. At last night’s PandoMonthly NY Event, Crowley said Foursquare has evolved into the best local search tool—and it’s happened in the last six months. Instead of checking in, users browse the app for its curated content. Monetization prospects are looking up, too. They have developed tools to build a recommendation engine in the dashboard and promoted results will be a key area of revenue. Crowley says now Yelp is his main competitor.

TechCrunch

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Yesterday, the Online Marketing Conference in NY set out to educate local businesses about online marketing. According to Street Fight Mag, some of the owners spoke of their issues with finding viable marketing options and also their experiences with Yelp. Laurie Nicholson, co-founder of Raising Astoria, talked about her store’s decision to advertise on Yelp and said, “It was my biggest mistake.” Representatives from Google, Yelp, Foursquare and other companies were at the conference, held at NY’s Rubin Museum.

Some people at the conference spoke very highly of Yelp, like Ismael Mosquera, owner of Gleam Salon in Morningside Heights. He said, “Nine of of ten of our new clients have been through Yelp. It’s been huge for us.” Yelp advertising gives some businesses the ability to break through the noise of many similar businesses. One definite conclusion from the event was that the needs of small businesses vary greatly from one another.

Street Fight Mag

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Foursquare recently launched its newest feature a few months ago, called Explore, which gives users location-based recommendations and attempts to create a game atmosphere for the app. More recently, according to MediaPost, the company has been facing criticism from some who have said the app lacks purpose.

However, Steven Rosenblatt, Foursquare’s new chief revenue officer, said in August that, “We still get 5 million check-ins a day, and have 2 billion in our system. What the check-in does is give us a lot of data about where you are, what your friends are doing, what you like, where you go — we don’t need to guess. The check-in and game mechanics of Foursquare — it was a great on-boarding apparatus. But with the all-new Foursquare we rolled out in recent weeks, we’ve brought the concept of Explore to the forefront. It takes these 2 billion check-ins, and all this data, and we’re getting really smart about recommending things to you.”

MediaPost

Samsung Galaxy S Captivate Android Smartphone Matrix 3D Live Wallpaper (Photo credit: Calgary Reviews)

NY-based startup LoyalBlocks gives customers deals directly to their smartphones the moment they walk in a businesses’ doors. The startup’s pilot program launched earlier this year and has already made its way to more than 300 small businesses throughout the city, according to the NY Daily News. LoyalBlocks gives companies an Android-based smartphone that sends a signal to visitors who have already downloaded the free app. Customers can then immediately view discounts on their mobile devices or get a punch on their virtual loyalty card when they visit the business.

LoyalBlocks CEO and Founder, Ido Gaver, told the NY Daily News that, “We want it to be a seamless and frictionless experience for consumers.” This service has grown out of the popular location-based check-in apps, like Foursquare, and most help customers tally up points when they shop.

NY Daily News

groupon (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

The success of such deal sites as Groupon, Google Offers, and LivingSocial has led to new apps targeting small businesses and hyper local deals. Deal site Leloca, based in Manhattan, lets users find nearby restaurants offering deals to fill empty tables. It offers two features to help merchants make deals more profitable by limiting access selectively: geo-targeting, so only locals who are likely to return will see the deal, and the ability to turn the deal off so money is not lost during busy times. The app is free for users, and costs businesses $1.99 per booking. So far, more than 200 NYC restaurants have signed up.

Foursquare has also joined the trend with its “promoted updates,” where merchants can insert paid messages to attract nearby customers. Also last month, Foursquare rolled out its free “local updates” tool, which allows merchants to send updates to its most loyal customers.

The NYU Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NYU has held the Entrepreneurs Challenge, a marathon competition for students, faculty and alums, for over a dozen years. The awards go to the three best startup ideas and has a total of $200,000 for award money. The challenge has had contestants like Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Dodgeball and Foursquare, and Ben Silberman, co-founder of Pinterest. The contest is put together by NYU Stern’s Berkely Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and involved over 175 teams that compete for eight months. The final cut is determined by a panel of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

According to Forbes, this year’s winners were five groups of students narrowed down from 12 finalists. Sleepbot, an app that helps manage sleep time, and Noor Pharmaceuticals, which develops and sells halal vitamins and supplements, split $75,000 in the  new venture category. The $50,000 prize for the social venture category went to Nutraceutical Market Solutions, a startup that aims to treat anemia in India with iron-fortified biscuits. RF Test Labs, which measures heat given off by mobile devices, and SeeMore Technology, which uses eye-tracking software to allow users to read text faster on e-readers and smartphones, split the $75,000 prize for for technology ­ventures.

Next year’s Entrepreneurs Challenge will be teaming up with Forbes to document the contest, which begins on September 30 and ends May 3.

Forbes

200 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The International Olympic Committee has launched various social network projects for the 2012 London Olympics. paidContent compiled a list of what fans should be tuning into and some of them include:

• Athletes Hub: this site has already launched and aggregates the 2,000 authorized Olympian’s Twitter pages and Facebook updates. Users can gain badges for following athletes.
• Tumblr: The IOC plans to launch four official pages: olympics.tumblr.com, which will aggregate existing feeds, Olympic Fashion, which features styles and clothing, Faces of Olympians, in which fans pull “Olympian faces,” and Olympic Moments, to which Getty Images is giving Olympic photos.
• Foursquare: Users will check into venues at the Games and have a chance to will tickets. Two will be given away each day.
• Google+: IOC has over 1.6 million followers for Olympics family pages.

paidContent

Logo for Foursquare (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Foursquare has announced today the pilot launch of its “promoted updates” feature, which allows companies to put out messages about deals or available products to Foursquare users. The companies first money-making feature has two different forms, a promoted update and a promoted special. The promoted update allows a company to issue a message about a new product and the promoted special allows a company to put out a message about discounts, according to Tech Crunch.  Foursquare’s chief revenue officer, Steven Rosenblatt, explained that the promoted updates feature use technology to target users specifically based on their locations and interests.

Rosenblatt added, “What we’re really excited about is that you have to be near a business to get an update. No matter how much someone pitches us, it has to be relevant, based on proximity and based on intent. Those are critical.” Updates are only available to about 20 companies right now including Gap, Best Buy, Hilton and Walgreens. These companies are paying Foursquare based on a “cost per action” system.

 Tech Crunch

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Foursquare introduced a new feature recently, called “Updates,” which lets businesses publish content for free to nearby users who have used it in the past. According to Street Fight Mag, these updates will appear in the friends tabs, as sponsored stories, and under the business listings section of the explore tab. This is a big update for the company, which has been moving towards monetization and mobilization of its more than 1 million merchants. In June, Foursquare revamped its app to play down the check-in feature in favor of a more discovery focused experience for the user. Later on in June the company introduced its “Connected-Apps” platform to gather developers in its own application.

The Updates feature is one of the largest additions to the company in terms of engagement since it launched its specials platform in March 2011. The company hopes that the update will contribute even more to the discovery-oriented goal of the product. Foursquare has already locked-in some national brands, like Outback Steakhouse, H&M, and Wolfgang Puck, as well as a few New York area local businesses. However, the remaining question for the startup is whether or not it can gain traction with merchants. Now, more than ever, companies everywhere are asking local merchants to contribute.

Street Fight Mag

Tripl

According to GigaOm, Tripl hopes to avoid the problems faced by other travel planning competitors by not requiring friends to sign up in order for users to view their travel data. Also, the social aspect makes the site more likely to see daily use even when the user is not planning an immediate trip.

GigaOm

1. Proximity Based Social Media- This is a new concept that connects social media users to nearby locations based on personal preferences. Many in the start up sector are being attracted to the potential of this technology. Apps that have already caught on to this Proximity Based Social Media include Foursquare and Sonar. But some have realized challenges that come along with this development, such as being able to properly filter location information based on the individual’s preferences.

2. Tablet Tailored Journalism- Online news aggregators combine important data across the web and share it effectively with users, but many still struggle with a profitable business structure. However, The Daily iPad app is setting out to combine traditional news content with the experience of the web, all while keeping users dedicated and engaged. The Newsstand 2.0 panel  discussed the future of journalism and featured Jesse Angelo, the editor of The Daily. His argument is that users will pay for quality content, and they seem to have proved it, as The Daily has over 100,000 paying subscribers

3. Authentic Brand Connections Sell- In order to maintain long term connections with users, Dolsten stresses the presentation of an authentic brand. Vice Magazine founder, Shane Smith, hosted a  presentation about Media Disconnect and how Vice re-imagined their brand to better fit reality, without losing the voice of their magazine.

Business2Community

(Editors Note- for some reason, the article refers to the festival as New York Internet Week)

The new app will more concisely tell users when their friends are nearby – a feature already present in its current app – but with a different interface. Also, one of its recent teasers showed that Foursquare is adding to their map feature on the mobile app only. Finally, screenshots hint at a possible new recommendation service that utilizes both location and friend check-ins.

According to WebProNews, this suggests that Foursquare is moving towards Dennis Crowley’s previously hinted at “predictive check-ins.” Given the amount of data the company has at their disposal, becoming a real recommendation service would be a logical next step.

WebProNews

Credit: Lloyd Trufelman

A panel including Foursquare‘s Henry Heyman, spoke about engineers in the city and the potential allure of the finance industry yesterday at the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC conference.  According to BetaBeat, the sought after engineers could be courted by the larger checkbook and “glam” offered by the finance sector.  The panelists weighed in.

Heyman said, “the kind of engineer that we really want to attract isn’t going to be interested in [money] in the first place.”  He feels that, for his company, the ideal candidate cares about the product and that there is a distinct kind of employee that gravitates towards the finance industry.

Heyman also believes that city-sponsored initiatives, like the new CornellNYC campus, will help local recruiting efforts for Foursquare.  While on the recruiting trail, Heyman offered two location-based choices for graduates: San Francisco or NY.  A significant portion chose the Big Apple as there is an abundance of activities.  “Being in New York has actually been a recruiting tool, and I expect that to only increase moving forward.”

BetaBeat

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With Facebook going public, Silicon Valley has bolstered its title as the U.S.’ economic tech giant.  According to Greg David in his Crain’s New York Business Column, the Bay Area’s 12 percent tech representation in the regional job market gives them “an outsize economic edge.”  Which has David wondering if the NY tech scene can ever close gap between the two regions.

David does point to some promising data, that more than 1,000 jobs in the sector have been added since 2007, and that venture capital funding has increased 32 percent.  Pointing to the recent Center for an Urban Future report, “New York appears to be building a sustainable tech sector, one that is benefiting from a much stronger local tech ecosystem than existed in the city’s first wave of tech growth in the 1990s.” Moreover, NY’s tech industry is one of three emerging areas for growth in the cit,y offering good paying jobs and diversifying the city’s economy.  Places like the new Roosevelt Island campus will hopefully become incubators to companies like Facebook, similar to Stanford’s influence in the Bay Area.

Ultimately though,  David believes that the NY tech scene will close gap “eventually,” but it will still take time.   In comparing  Facebook, NY’s top valued startups Foursquare and Gilt Groupe, they are valued at $1 billion — just 1/100th of the Menlo Park giant.

Crain’s New York Business