Name: The Twitter-Foursquare deal: What's in it for each company?
Uploaded: 2015-03-23
Duration: 2 min 54 s
Description: Fortune's Andrew Nusca and Erin Griffith discuss location-based tweets and how Foursquare is using data to make a comeback.

Twitter has announced that its licensing Four Square location data for its tweets. Aaron, can Four Square be a data company? Well in a lot of ways it already is. I mean they're already making money from licensing their data. They have 85, 000 partners that tap into their data and they also, you know, get data back from that. So, you know, they're building a robust business, it's not their biggest, but it is growing quickly. What's interesting now about Twitter is that. Twitter and, had location data. You could tweet, and you could use GPS to say here's where I am. But now, they've decided that it's superior to pay Foursquare in order to use the venues. So if I tweeted now, it would say I'm in the Time Inc. building and Foursquare has, like, a really. Really good sense of exactly where I am, so Twitter's decided this app is superior. Yeah, I mean clearly a lot of businesses are looking at the data that they have, and they wanna get value out of it, right, and, especially in this social area, so many companies have. Have risen up just, just on the promise that if they collect enough data, you know Well, we're spinning off so much data from Facebook and Twitter and all of these social things we're using. Exactly. Exactly. And so, it, it, the thing that gives me pause is, you know, alright, a lot of data's useful ,. Maybe. You know, to get business value out of it, hm, it's not a straight path. Right, you can't just say, here's the data, buy it. It has, you have to have some context and some relevance for, and so this is what FourSquare is trying to say, that we're better than all of these, like, kind of companies that just are aggregating tweets. We have real value. I mean, they're making recommendations, they know exactly where you are, and it has worked to some extent. I mean, even Waze. Uses Foursquare's data, which is really interesting because Waze is owned by Google which has Google Maps and they have a ton of venue data. So like, you would think, why, isn't Google's data better. Right. But no, Waze has chosen to use Foursquare because they have contacts and recommendations. So this could be a really interesting business for Foursquare. Yeah, but we can't forget about Instagram, right. So Instagram was using Foursquare data for a long time. Yeah. And then when Facebook acquired it, it kinda kicked them to the curb. Mm- hm. Started using Facebook's own location data. You know, they're going to do a deal with Twitter now. You've got to think, mm maybe they'll get to the curb down the line. That's true. There's always that, that problem. And then, I, I, I have to talk about [ LAUGH ] their consumer apps, you know. You've got the namesake app Foursquare, you get restaurant recommendations, things like that. And then you've got Swarm, which is the check- ins like friends location app. You know, people aren't using them quite like they used to. And the question is are they ever going to? They've definitely lost some momentum, you know. It was a really hot app for a while. Cover of magazines, everyone's talking about it. And it's. Kind of falling off. You know, there, there's still really great, valuable apps. And they have alot of users. But it's just not the same, and it's really hard to recapture that excitement and hype around a consumer app. I mean alot of them lose it and they just never get it back. Like, look at My Space. Even Justin Timberlake couldn't save it. However, you know, it's really fascinating to watch Foursquare because Dennis Crowley, the CEO and Founder, he is just like, so focused on this vision and, and obsessed with it, even if it's irrational. And so it's really exciting to watch someone just like, go for it. Fair point. For one show you can always check into, come to fortune. com for more Tech Debate.

Fortune's Andrew Nusca and Erin Griffith discuss location-based tweets and how Foursquare is using data to make a comeback.