Foursquare is now contributing “business listings data” to Apple Maps. Since the launch of Maps, Apple vowed to collect data from multiple sources to improve the service over time, and is living up to that promise with this new addition.
It turns out that Apple has actually been collecting data from Foursquare for almost a month now. It added Foursquare to an Acknowledgments page on the Apple website back on October 22, 2015. Apple Maps Marketing only recently did the digging to find it.
Plenty of other sources like Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Yellow Pages also contribute to the business listings. Plus, Yelp is most prominent for partnering with Apple Maps to display all of the in-app reviews. Hopefully the addition of Foursquare’s wealth of information means certain locations might see more accurate results.
But really, this deal probably means way more to Foursquare than to Apple or even consumers. Foursquare hasn’t been doing so well in recent years. What was once arguably the hottest startup to emerge out of New York City has fallen significantly out of the spotlight, particularly since check-ins broke off into a separate app called Swarm and caused an uproar.
Armed with this new deal with Apple and a bit more clout as a result, perhaps Foursquare can attempt to build itself back up as a worthy competitor to Yelp.
