Foursquare raises $50m

Social location service planning to hire more engineers, beef up merchant offerings and expand internationally.

Venture capital firms are still checking in to social location service Foursquare, to the tune of $50 million.

The company has announced the new round, led by Andreessen-Horowitz with participation from O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital.

"The additional capital will allow us to move more quickly; we can hire more engineers (we’re hiring in New York and San Francisco!), evolve our merchant offerings, expand internationally, and try a ton of new things," write co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai in a blog post.

"In the last year, we’ve grown from 15 employees to over 70, and our community has grown from under 1 million to over 10 million. The opportunity to build something meaningful in the location space is HUGE, and we feel well-positioned to capitalize on it."

The funding round is thought to value Foursquare at around $600 million, and brings Foursquare's total funding so far to $70 million.