Foursquare, the 10-year-old location platform based in New York City, this week announced its plan to merge with Factual.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The merged company will keep the Foursquare moniker, and Foursquare CEO David Shim will remain at the helm, with Factual’s founder and now-former CEO Gil Elbaz joining Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley as a member of the board and executive team.
Whilst Foursquare reported more than USD 100 million in revenue last year, it is not the company I knew back in 2009, where the location-based social network, let people check-in to locations to share with their friends and earn badges (I loved being ‘Mayor’) and indeed the AV industry used it at a number of shows and exhibits and the advertising industry used it with some success as well [1].
The business has now evolved into a rather useful advertising and marketing platform focused on location as a differentiator. Back in 2014, Foursquare split its main app into two separate ones; the Foursquare City Guide and Swarm (Swarm let users check in to locations and earn mayorships and other stickers) and Foursquare City Guide which used past check-in data and data from Swarm to power a Yelp-type competitor, giving users a way to find great restaurants and experiences in their area.
Uber uses Foursquare’s tools to allow users to type in the name of the restaurant or stores where they wanted to be picked up, rather than having to hunt down the physical address and Vistar Media announced a partnership with them earlier this year [2].
A company spokesperson acknowledged that there would be redundancies as a result of this merger.
Prior to the merger, Factual raised a total of USD 104 million, most recently in a USD 42 million round from Upfront Ventures and Felicis Ventures.
The combined entity will represent some of the largest location data sets in the world, spanning more than 500 million devices, a panel of 25 million opted-in, always on users and over 14 billion user-confirmed check-ins. The company will also have data on more than 105 million points of interest across 190 countries and 50 territories.