Many marketers and businesses jump at the opportunity to work with a heavily location-based service, with a user base that is really quite high. One such service, possibly the most popular of them, is Foursquare. This service has been popular for a while now, and the entire point to using it is based on the actual location of the user. Because of this, it has become quite an important tool for marketers or businesses looking to get new customers in the door. To target through location is very sought after, and Foursquare has allowed businesses to do just that. Now, Foursquare is opening the door a bit wider, and giving businesses even more information that they can use for targeting users.
Announced by Foursquare recently, these are the changes that are going to be made to the company’s privacy policy.
1. We will now display your full name. Currently, Foursquare sometimes shows your full name and sometimes shows your first name and last initial (“John Smith” vs. “John S.”). For instance, if you search for a friend in Foursquare, we show their full name in the results, but when you click through to their profile page you don’t see their last name. In the original versions of Foursquare, these distinctions made sense. But we get emails every day saying that it’s now confusing. So, with this change, full names are going to be public. As always, you can alter your ‘full name’ on Foursquare at https://foursquare.com/settings.
2. A business on Foursquare will be able to see more of their recent customers. Currently, a business using Foursquare (like your corner coffee shop) can see the customers who have checked in in the last three hours (in addition to the most recent and their most loyal visitors). This is great for helping store owners identify their customers and give them more personal service or offers. But a lot of businesses only have time to log in at the end of the day to look at it. So, with this change, we’re going to be showing them more of those recent check-ins, instead of just three hours worth. As always, if you’d prefer not to permit businesses to see when you check into their locations going forward, you can uncheck the box under ‘Location Information’ athttps://foursquare.com/settings/privacy.
The Foursquare of today is so different than the first version that launched in 2009, and we appreciate that you let us continue to evolve and build our vision. This occasionally means altering our privacy policy. When we do, we make it a priority to come up with clear ways to help you understand your privacy choices, and to communicate them clearly. If you have any questions or want more details, head over to our updated privacy policy or support.foursquare.com.
These changes will all be great for businesses and marketers, surely. However, a change to privacy policies right now, in light of Facebook and Instagram recently having outrage over the exact same thing, may be a bit of a fragile decision. Either way, with the way things look right now for Foursquare and their privacy policy, it seems that even more businesses and marketers will be interested in hopping on board with the service, which benefits both these businesses and Foursquare. For more about Foursquare’s new privacy policy, visit their Privacy 101 page.
