Foursquare

Foursquare is a US location technology company and data cloud platform headquartered in New York City.^[2] Founded by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai, it rose to prominence with its check-in app before pivoting to enterprise location data products; today its platform includes the Foursquare Places database of more than 120 million commercial points of interest across 200+ countries and territories.^[2]

The company's technology stack draws on billions of historical check-ins and always-on location signals, and its developer tools include the Movement SDK for stop-detection and snap-to-place, the H3-based Hex Tiles analytics system, Foursquare Studio for geospatial visualization, and the Foursquare Graph knowledge graph.^[2]

What It Does

Foursquare supplies location data and foot-traffic-derived analytics to enterprises: Pinpoint (launched 2015) enabled location-based marketing audiences, Attribution (2016) measures media performance in terms of store visits, and the Places API powers delivery, navigation, ride-share, and shopping applications.^[2] Its data combines first-party check-ins, third-party sources, and a Geosummarizer ML model updated in real time.^[2]

Data And Methodology

Core technology began with Pilgrim SDK, started in 2011 and renamed Movement SDK in 2023, which uses machine learning over GPS, cell, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, and time-of-day inputs to detect stops and infer place visits.^[2] The company holds more than 80 geolocation patents, including methods for attributing in-store visits to ad exposure.^[2]

Products

Current products include Foursquare Places, Foursquare Studio (acquired as Unfolded in 2021), Hex Tiles (launched February 2022), Foursquare Graph (May 2023), and the Movement SDK; consumer apps such as City Guide, Swarm, Rewards, and Marsbot were progressively sunset between 2021 and 2025.^[2]

History

Foursquare launched at SXSW in 2009 and opened its API that November.^[2] Enterprise products followed from 2015. In May 2019 it acquired Placed, a footfall measurement firm, from Snap Inc.; in April 2020 it merged with location-data peer Factual in an all-stock deal; and in 2021 it acquired Unfolded.^[2]

Leadership has passed from Crowley to Jeff Glueck (2016), David Shim (2019), and Gary Little (2020).^[2] In May 2024 the company laid off about a quarter of its workforce.^[2] Investors have included Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ Growth, Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners, and Spark Capital.^[2]

Landscape

With the Factual merger and the Placed acquisition, Foursquare consolidated much of the US location-intelligence ecosystem, competing with mobile-location specialists such as Cuebiq and Azira and foot-traffic analytics platforms such as Placer.ai.^[1][2]

More datasets from Foursquare

Foursquare lists 10 datasets on this encyclopedia. The most representative listings:

More about Foot Traffic & Mobility

Foot Traffic & Mobility is one of the signal families covered by The Alternative Data Encyclopedia, with 23 providers and 438 datasets listed in the register. For how the signal is generated, its caveats and the compliance considerations, and the full provider list, see the category article.