Foursquare has announced two major advancements to its leading location technology platform: the relaunch of the Places Database and the introduction of Places Enterprise API. With the enhanced database and new enterprise-grade API, Foursquare further cements its status as the #1 independent provider of point-of-interest (POI) data for enterprises and developers.
The relaunch of the database marks the completion of a month-long effort to fully combine Foursquare’s data set with that of Factual, which merged with Foursquare in April 2020. Now, Places encompasses the best aspects of both POI data sets — including an unmatched ecosystem of trusted sources — and leads the industry in data accuracy and freshness.
“With more enterprises turning to location technology as a crucial ingredient to their technology stack, we wanted to rebuild our API with more modern infrastructure to better support the needs of our customers and partners with improved data quality and better scaling capabilities,” said Aditi Kohli, Foursquare’s Managing Director, APAC. “Our two improved offerings will now not only empower enterprises and developers to use Places as a tool to solve complex business problems, but will also serve as a foundational building block to help power their growth.”
The release of the Places Enterprise API strengthens Foursquare’s enterprise-grade location solutions, following many successful years of its Developer API, which was originally built to meet the specific needs of one organisation: Foursquare itself. Others saw that a location API could enhance their own technology too, and over the years, the Developer API offered value to many of Foursquare’s partners and customers such as Samsung and Twitter.
Places Database: A richer map of the world
Today, Foursquare’s Places database represents a map of the world that is brimming with even more comprehensive, accurate, and rich detail. With the API database revamp, developers and enterprises can use Places to design more engaging experiences for their users, identify the perfect location for a new brick-and-mortar venue, conduct more comprehensive market assessments, and much more.
This is as the Places data pipeline is designed to deliver accuracy and deep context by validating and clustering millions of references to make sure the data is accurate. It also provides customers with the most complete picture possible with greater visibility on data sources, augmented with real-world context that can only come in the form of millions of fresh check-ins, tips, reviews, and photos from an active first-party community of Foursquare’s app users.
Places Enterprise API: Better data delivery for enterprises
Using the Developer API as a foundation, Foursquare rebuilt a new API (currently in beta) with the goal of creating a delivery method that can meet enterprise standards, upgrade the developer experience, and enable great location-aware apps. With the improvements made to the infrastructure, Foursquare is now able to offer an availability service level agreement (SLA) of 99.9%.
The developer experience around the API has also been improved by simplifying the current endpoints and releasing documentation with a brand new explorer tool. This new API explorer makes it easy to test code snippets in the browser, giving developers the ability to experiment and quickly get started using the API before ever needing to commit changes to their code. Today, Place Search, Details, Photos, and Tips endpoints are available with more additions to be made by the end of this year.
Interested in sampling the new-and-improved Places Database? Reach out to Foursquare directly.
