Foursquare Pulls in Third-Party Deals
Foursquare announced today that it will add pre-purchased daily deals to its roster of nearby specials. These will come from a cluster of new partners and will operate under a rev share. They’ll show up just like its current specials do, such as through the Explore tab.
According to a Foursquare blog post:
Whether it’s a discount or special treatment or a free baseball, people love foursquare Specials. That’s why we’ve been expanding the platform — creating new types of Specials, offering Starwood Reward Points, and partnering with American Express for new “load to card” seamless redemption. And, starting this week, foursquare Specials will now include “Deals” — deep discounts that you buy ahead of time — from five amazing companies:
— LivingSocial, with their handpicked experiences that you can share with friends, all over the world;
— Gilt City, which unlocks insider access to the best of your city, like exclusive menus and tickets to sold-out shows;
— zozi, focusing exclusively on unique experiences and activities like moonlight kayaking, cycling and wine tasting, and shark diving;
— BuyWithMe, for discovering the best experiences in 13 cities across the U.S.; and,
— AT&T Interactive (Deal of the Day from YP.com), with over 50% off their daily deals for real life in Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Los Angeles.
This comes just a week before we’ll have Foursquare biz dev lead Tristan Walker on stage at our Deals 3D conference. I’ll be sure to drill down into these new deals and what they mean for the company and its developing revenue model.
It also will be interesting to see how they’re targeting these deals — surely by location but are there other relevance triggers for optimal deal distribution to on-the-go users in Foursquare’s core demographics? Does this present an opportunity to broaden that core?
One of the cool things about this integration is that the deals will show up to be purchased right within Foursquare. Users aren’t sent to these originating sites which should reduce friction. This also puts it squarely in competition with GrouponNOW.
We’ll also talk about the recent expansion of mobile payments with Amex, and lots of other good stuff the company is getting into as it accelerates product development. Hope to see you there.
