Foursquare Augments Its Merchant Offerings

It wasn’t so long ago that Foursquare brought out a whole new version of its widely used social mobile location app, but now it’s gotten a little extra firepower in its merchant arm with a big new update.

The update is not only a redesign, but rather a complete rewrite. The code involved, according to product manager Noah Weiss, was “literally rewritten…from scratch”. Given that Foursquare has almost one million verified merchants using their apps, it makes plenty of sense for Foursquare to launch such an update. The biggest move is that they’ve brought in what’s known as “Local Updates”. Local Updates is a tool that gives merchants a better chance to make contact with their customers by issuing updates involving a wide variety of media types, like photos and videos. Foursquare users that have checked into that business–or just “liked” it–will also start receiving the updates whenever they arrive in the area. For example, if you were lived in Orlando, but liked a pizza place in Chicago, you wouldn’t get updates from the pizza place while you were in Orlando. But cross into Chicago, and the updates start up.

There are others on hand, of course, but Local Updates is clearly the big draw here. While some might draw comparisons between this and, say, Twitter, it’s no less helpful for Foursquare users, especially those who do a lot of traveling and want to find all the big things when they’re out. It may well prove worthwhile for small businesses to respond to this accordingly by offering up special deals for those “in the area” likes who just started getting updates again.

For those businesses who want to be sure all those customers, no matter where they are, are able to get hold of their favorite business–specifically, yours–it will be worthwhile to look into some cloud-based telephony tools like auto attendants and local number services. This in turn will help make sure that those people who do call can not only do so inexpensively, but also still manage to reach those in the best position to help users get what they need.

Foursquare’s enhancements are likely to be a big help for merchants, and for those small businesses who want a little extra punch in their sales, will make this all well worth looking into.