Foursquare backing local deals – look at partnership with Groupon

Just like Groupon came back fighting strong after the introduction of Facebook Deals & Checkin Deals, Foursquare are on the attack as well, with a long list of partnership deals & new products rumoured. They’re certainly not willing to let go of their place in the location space, and though I would be just more than slightly dubious about their potential to reach new heights in the wake of Facebook Places, they’re certainly not going down without a fight. They’re looking hard at partnering with other powerhouses, and new services such as local deals for smaller businesses, that sees them diversifying and entering more into the mainstream.

Foursquare to partner with Groupon?

A story just starting to do the rounds this morning, is that Foursquare and Groupon are looking at a partnership deal, that could see increasingly localised ads targeted at users, based on their checkin data. This is a busy time for Groupon as well, but this seems like a natural move for both organisations, as they combine the data that they both have to improve the service offered. What seems slightly odd is that Groupon just recently acquired Loopt, a Foursquare competitor. But this may well have been a strategic move to bring the skills inhouse and discontinue the Loopt name and Foursquare competitor, while coming back even stronger with the new-look local deals offering through Foursquare. Foursquare do still benefit from approximately 10 million active users, which is a valuable audience for Groupon to get in front of. And while Foursquare could invest in their own deals offering (which isn’t out the question as this is purely at rumour stage), going in with the might of Groupon considering their penetration outside of America and across Europe.

Google Places adds Foursquare support

Google Places have just announced a recent update to their service, that sees users able to add check-ins via Foursquare, as well as other location services. As well as just adding pure checkin functionality, they have also added the option to add an RSS feed of your Facebook checkins to pull in a shareable feed of your checkins via placecards.

It seems that everyone wants a piece of the Foursquare pie at the moment, or at least everyone who’s at risk from Facebook and their introduction of Places. Localisation is clearly the next area that social networks and apps want to get into, but the risk of course is that Facebook can own this, just as much as they own small business presence through their Pages offering.

Can they really beat Facebook?

Perhaps a predictable and overused question at this point, but be sure that every move Foursquare is making now is with one eye on Facebook, and how they can hope to beat them. This could be the wrong strategy for Foursquare however. While it looked like Twitter was in trouble when Facebook unarguably copied a lot of their features, they stood true to their original offering and retained a loyal audience. Foursquare is a lot more vulnerable than Twitter, as they have a much smaller userbase and have been established for a much shorter time than Twitter. But by focusing on what Facebook can’t offer people, they could hope to emerge stronger than it looked like they would have done when Facebook first introduced Places. There is a much stronger allegiance between users of Foursquare and Twitter for example, than there would be between Facebook and Foursquare, so this could be a logical next step for them as well. For now the (possible) partnership with Groupon should see Foursquare do well and consolidate their offering.