Foursquare wins major victory with death of Facebook Places

While Facebook was rolling out some changes to its privacy policies today, the company also quietly announced it was killing off the Foursquare-like Places function inside of its mobile app.

The Facebook Places feature was unveiled a year ago and let users “check-in” to various locations. Many saw this as a serious threat to other social location services like Foursquare and Gowalla because Facebook has an incredible number of users. But by October you could … Continue Reading

Foursquare explains itself better to businesses and brands

Popular location check-in application Foursquare just launched a new “Foursquare for Business” page to encourage businesses and brands to claim venues and create partnerships.

With millions of consumers checking in to locations around the world, Foursquare has quickly become another marketing tool for companies. Previously, Foursquare had a less-than-stellar set of pages explaining how a business may claim a venue.

With today’s launch, the new page, dubbed “Quick Start Guide,” is much more dynamic, interactive and spotlight … Continue Reading

CloudMade accelerates its location platform by buying OneStepAhead

CloudMade, a company that provides mapping data to 16,200 application developers, just announced that it has acquired German startup OneStepAhead.

I last spoke to CloudMade chief executive Juha Christensen when the company raised its second round of funding in July. At the time, he acknowledged that there are competitors (such as SimpleGeo) offering tools to create location apps, but he said CloudMade offers more than detailed data to power “hundreds of thousands of apps in … Continue Reading

Shopping startup Retailigence stocks up with DFJ and Dave McClure

Shopping startup Retailigence says it’s creating a “bridge” connecting real-world “brick-and-mortar” stores with mobile and web applications. Now the Palo Alto, Calif. company has enlisted some well-known investors to fund its efforts: Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Dave McClure’s 500 Startups fund.

Retailigence takes inventory data from both sophisticated software (like that offered by SAP and NetSuite) and basic spreadsheets, then makes the information available through an application programming interface (API) to developers of location-based apps, … Continue Reading

Bones in Motion trys to catch up to Garmin with cell phone GPS tracking for athletes

Shopping startup Retailigence says it’s creating a “bridge” connecting real-world “brick-and-mortar” stores with mobile and web applications. Now the Palo Alto, Calif. company has enlisted some well-known investors to fund its efforts: Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Dave McClure’s 500 Startups fund.

Retailigence takes inventory data from both sophisticated software (like that offered by SAP and NetSuite) and basic spreadsheets, then makes the information available through an application programming interface (API) to developers of location-based apps, … Continue Reading