Foursquare may boast a $600 million valuation and 10 million members, but the location-based social networking service is still having trouble actually making money. Now, to help augment its revenue, the company is partnering with outside daily-deals sites to resell coupons targeted to its users’ locations.
Deals from LivingSocial, Gilt Groupe, AT&T, BuyWithMe, and Zozi will be made available to Foursquare users through a new "Explore Now" tab in its mobile app. Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley said the company will get revenue from the deals it sells for its partners, but declined to specify the breakdown, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company is also said to be in talks about a similar partnership with coupon giant Groupon.
Using its location-based check-ins and data, such as where a member’s friends are checking in, Foursquare is planning to target deals to a user’s specific location—which will hopefully give it a leg up in an increasingly crowded daily-deals marketplace. “We are trying to see if our targeting works and how users will react,” Crowley told the WSJ. “The deals haven't been heavily targeted with some of these providers.”
The deals will begin rolling out today to users of Foursquare’s iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry applications in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
