Foursquare (company) — BrandWiki

Foursquare (company)

Overview

Foursquare Labs Inc.

key people
founders	Dennis Crowley Naveen Selvadurai
type	Private
industry	Location technology Advertising technology App developer tools
founded	March 11, 2009 in New York, New York, U.S.
area served	Worldwide
location city	New York City, New York
location country	United States

Foursquare Labs Inc., commonly known as Foursquare, is a geolocation technology company and data cloud platform based in the United States. Founded by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai in 2009, the company rose to prominence with the launch of its local search-and-discovery mobile app. The app, Foursquare City Guide, popularized the concept of real-time location sharing and checking-in.

Alongside additions and iterations to its consumer apps, the company also began to create products that leverage the location data collected via billions of check-ins.

History

Launch and early years

Co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai founded Foursquare in 2008 and launched Foursquare City Guide in 2009 at SXSW.[3] Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball as his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University and subsequently sold it to Google in 2005.[4]

num employees	Approximately 300‡R2R‡

website	https://location.foursquare.com/

2015 to present

In April 2015, Foursquare began offering location-based enterprise products for marketers and advertisers with the launch of Pinpoint.[13] The company subsequently released Attribution, a tool for media performance measurement, in February 2016,[14] and the Movement (FKA Pilgrim) software development kit, which allows developers to use Foursquare's core Movement technology to add context into their own apps and services, in March 2017.[15] Each of these tools can be used independently, or they can be bundled together.[16]

On January 14, 2016, co-founder Dennis Crowley stepped down from his position as CEO. He moved to an Executive Chairman position while Jeff Glueck, the company's COO, succeeded Crowley as the new CEO.[17][18]

In 2017, Foursquare announced its expansion in the Asia-Pacific region with partners like Tencent and Samsung, and a new office in Singapore.[19] Over the course of the three-year period from 2015 through 2017, the company's revenue grew by more than 50% each year.[20][21] In early 2018, Foursquare opened a new engineering office in Chicago.[22]

In May 2019, Foursquare bought Placed from Snap Inc.[23]

On December 6, 2019, Foursquare's Board of Directors announced the appointment of David Shim as Chief Executive Officer and Member of the Board.[24]

In April 2020, Foursquare announced a merger with Factual Inc. in an all-stock deal.[25][26]

On November 5, 2020 it was announced that David Shim was stepping down as Chief Executive Officer, to be replaced by Gary Little, a member of the company's board.[27]

On May 20, 2021, Foursquare announced an agreement to acquire Unfolded, a next-generation platform for geospatial data unification, enrichment, visualization, and analytics to help solidify the company's location, geospatial technology, and developer community. Unfolded has been renamed to Foursquare Studio. [28]

In February 2022, Foursquare launched Hex Tiles,[29] a tiling system that maximizes the speed and efficiency of data analytics for businesses looking to perform large-scale geospatial analytics for decision-making purposes.

In May 2023, the company launched Foursquare Graph,[30] a geospatial knowledge graph designed to improve how businesses derive value from location data through the use of graph technology and the H3 grid system.

In May 2024, Foursquare laid off 105 employees, approximately 25% of its workforce.[31]

Consumer apps

Foursquare City Guide

Launched in March 2009, Foursquare City Guide is a local search and discovery mobile app that helps users discover new places from a community of peers.[3] The app provides personalized recommendations of places to go near a user's current location based on the user's previous visits, likes and check-in history.[40] The Foursquare City Guide mobile app was officially sunset on December 15, 2024, and the web version followed on April 28, 2025.

Foursquare Swarm

In May 2014, the company launched Foursquare Swarm, a companion app to Foursquare City Guide, which migrated the social networking and location sharing aspects of the service into a separate application. Swarm acts as a lifelogging tool for users to keep a record of the places they have been, featuring statistics on the places they have been, and a search capability to recall places where they have checked in.[41] Swarm also lets users share where they have been with their friends, and see where their friends have been.

Rewards by Foursquare

In August 2021, the company relaunched Rewards, previously Foursquare’s Panel App.[42] The app gave users the opportunity to earn points to be redeemed for gift cards in exchange for enabling background location services. The app was sunset in May 2023.

Marsbot

Launched in May 2016, Marsbot was a location-aware tool that sent context-based suggestions about nearby places to eat and drink via text, tailored to users' preferences.[43][44] In October 2020, Foursquare introduced an audio AR version for AirPods called Marsbot for AirPods, which provided location-specific guidance through users' bluetooth headphones.[45] Marsbot was sunset in 2021.

Superlocal

In April 2025, the company acquired Superlocal, a map app built on Foursquare’s geospatial platform. Superlocal automatically logs users' locations and uses that data to provide personalized recommendations on where to go next. Its key features include Fog of World, where users reveal a fog-covered map layer to track the percentage of the Earth they’ve visited, and automatic check-ins. These lifelogging features then power the app’s AI-driven search functionality.

Foursquare (company)

History

Launch and early years

Swarm release

2015 to present

Funding

Consumer apps

Foursquare City Guide

Foursquare Swarm

Rewards by Foursquare

Marsbot

Superlocal

Products and technology

Foursquare Graph

Foursquare Places

Foursquare Studio

Hex Tiles

Movement SDK

Patents

System and Method for Providing Recommendations with a Location-Based Service

Analyzing Impact of Ad Campaign on in-Store Visitation Behavior

Taste Extraction Curation and Tagging

Apparatus, Systems, and Methods for Providing Location Information

External links

References