FourSquare and Singapore’s Refinery Media have entered a partnership deal under which the geo location service will be meshed into Refinery’s Supermodelme Season 2 show.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but the agreement should bring increased brand visibility for Refinery Media’s advertisers as alerts from sponsors will be displayed whenever users check into certain locations.
The companies will also lauch a game, enabling Foursquare users to check into listed listed locations to unlock “Superstyle” and “Superconnected” badges, earning them exclusive deals on the spot as well as a better chance to win to a ticket to the Supermodelme finale.
Don’t get fooled by the recent reports about Yahoo and Nokia joining hands on maps, mail and chat services. Yes, they are both ageing twentieth-century web and mobile brands and yes this deal seems to be intended to bridge the gap with rivals Google and Apple. However, if you read closely, there might very well be more to it than what the press in general wants to see. Believe me, the place where the companies are most likely to benefit from their partnership is in emerging markets. Read on.
Buzzzy, a Google Buzz only search engine, is now able to track location by way of the data sent when people update their statuses on social sites during an event.
With such information, it is possible
- to find out who really is at an event vs says is at the event as the localization does not depend on an explicit “check-in”, unlike apps like Gowalla, FourSquare, Twitter, etc.
- to streamline the amount of data received as the app only looks at those actually sent from a specific location
As consumers and audiences shift toward non-traditional channels in their quest for content, online gaming via social media platforms have become the prime battleground for advertisers and marketers alike, spurring widely reported animosity between Facebook and Zynga.
According to a TechCrunch report citing an email from unnamed sources, social-gaming giant Zynga is readying to fend for itself, cutting the cord to Facebook and launching its own social gaming platform to be called Zynga Live.
It’s gonna be a great year for stalkers.
In August, Twitter unveiled a location-sharing feature. It was limited to the API, so that developers could incorporate location data without having to require profiles in their own apps.
Now, Twitter is allowing geotagged Tweets directly from its site. The update is being rolled out, so most of you don’t have it yet. Or you might just need to use the right browser.
Tweeting with location only works on Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome on Windows. Sorry, Safari and IE users.
