Foursquare Joins the Coupon Craze

Foursquare, the popular geo-tagging social network passed the 20 million user mark about 2 weeks ago, on the application’s third annual 4sqDay. Now however, Foursquare is not happy with being just a popular but unprofitable social network and it has revealed its first reported initiative to start making money from the application. How will the company go about doing this? With the help of personalized coupons apparently. Dennis Crowley who is the co-founder of Foursquare told the WallStreetJournal that it is planning to offer coupons which will apparently be tailored to each and every user of the application from July onwards. This news comes after earlier reports that suggested Foursquare might be releasing a new paid media platform that is said to launch in June.

With regards to the coupons, the company hopes to allow merchants to buy allocated placements for promotions of the above mentioned personalized local offers that will apparently come along with a redesigned app scheduled for July. All users of the application will have access to the specials that are on offer but they must check into the venue in order to make the redemption. Although the actual revenue that is to be made from this strategy can be questionable. It is reportedly one of four methods of money-making that the company will be putting into action. While what seems to be a new advertising method doesn’t guarantee loyalty from either local business or potential new users, it seems like it is a step in the right direction in the company’s monetization initiative. What do you think about it?

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: foursquare, social network