Foursquare reveals plans to work with local businesses

iPhone app Foursquare has revealed plans to work with more local businesses, publicising them via special offers in its location-based social networking application.

The initiative is called Foursquare for Business, and involves partnering with local venues - bars and cafes for example - to offer special deals to users of the app.

"We'd be thrilled to have your bar / cafe / coffee shop / restaurant / store as part of our foursquare specials program. This can happen in a variety of ways, but essentially comes down to rewarding customer loyalty based on the data behind foursquare usage," says the site.

"For example, foursquare can tell you how many times a customer has been to your venue or the frequency of their visits. Many venues are now using this data to reward their most loyal customers with freebies or discounts."

The app gets people to track how often they visit local venues, winning badges for their 'achievements', and competing to be the 'mayor' of individual places by visiting them the most.

The launch of the dedicated Business section of Foursquare's website led Mashable to claim that the initiative is about local advertising, quoting an executive from the Tasti D-Lite chain as saying "the potential for us to engage in this way is huge. I believe the potential analytics related to this could make for the most effective localized campaign creation."

However, TechCrunch has since run a follow-up piece saying Foursquare isn't looking to charge businesses at this point, but is more exploring the kinds of relationships that can be established.

Either way, the interesting thing is that an iPhone app that may have seemed like a novelty for the geekerati when it launched, is turning into something that could be a genuinely useful way for local businesses to drum up business.

Now, if only Foursquare would get a move on with adding UK cities to the app...