- Location platform company Foursquare announced it is merging with Factual. These are the details.
Location platform company Foursquare announced it is merging with Factual. The terms of the deal were undisclosed. The merged company will operate under the Foursquare name.
Foursquare CEO David Shim will be running the combined company. And Factual founder and former CEO Gil Elbaz will join Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley as a board member. This merger was reportedly in talks before the COVID-19 outbreak.
Foursquare originally started out as a location-based social network and launched at SXSW in 2009. At the time, Foursquare users earned virtual badges for checking in to certain locations. About five years later, Foursquare got split into two apps. The location-based social network got moved to an app called Swarm and Foursquare City Guide taps into data from Swarm for running a Yelp rival. Then Foursquare launched a back-end platform for brands and publishers to utilize data, including an API for offering contextual details to end users. And Foursquare generated over $100 million in revenue last year.
Factual also launched in 2009 and its location data has been used for improving ads. And the company offers brands an option for tracking the success of marketing campaigns.
The combination of Foursquare and Factual generated over $150 million in revenue in over 20 global markets. The customers of both companies include Microsoft, Samsung, Uber, Snap, Twitter, and over half of the Fortune 100.
“With Factual, Foursquare is now the undisputed independent leader in location technology and data, with the #1 solution across audiences, point-of-interest, developer tools, and attribution. Foursquare delivers the stack that powers the location layer of the internet. This combination establishes the standard in location for the next decade, allowing our clients to accelerate the adoption of location technology as a must have in their day to day business operations,” wrote Elbaz in a blog post.
The new Fourquare will have datasets spanning over 500 million devices worldwide and a panel of 25 million opted-in, always-on users, and over 14 billion user confirmed check-ins. Plus it will have over 105 million points of interest across 190 countries and 50 territories.
“Following Foursquare’s acquisition of Placed last year and upon the integration with Factual, together we’ll offer customers a united product portfolio, providing the best in highly scalable audiences, offline attribution, point of interest (POI) data and developer tools that will enable companies to tap into data and insights that optimize their marketing and business decisions,” Elbaz added.
