Among location based social networks, Foursquare is arguably the most popular so a move like what it did at the Mobile World Congress will surely be noticed and talked about.
In the said event, Foursquare not only announced that it will start using predictive technology to offer suggestions to its Foursquare members but that it will also explore new corporate partnerships as it tries to strengthen its hold on the location market. One of these new partnerships was announced in the event. FourSquare announced that it will stop using Google Maps and will instead start using OpenStreetMaps. In its blog, FourSquare said that users will see a difference when they use the app, in terms of colors and buttons but has maintained that its level of service and functionality will not be affected.
FourSquare said the decision to use OpenStreetMaps is its way of supporting and promoting “crowd-sourced and open data.” But the company did say that the original reason for finding an alternative to Google Maps was Google’s pricing. Ultimately, FourSquare stressed, the combination of OpenStreetMaps and MapBox’s map design application is the perfect fit for the service.
FourSquare is not the first company or service to leave the Google Maps service. Google is strongly making moves to strengthen its stake on the geo-social sector of the market as well so FourSquare’s move looks like it is the logical thing to do at this point.
Originally posted on March 1, 2012 @ 8:31 pm
Just stop using Google entirely, including all their properties. No YouTube, no Picasa, no Maps, no Android, etc. If Google wants to play with our privacy, then we should not give Google any more information, should we not?