Microsoft has made a modest investment in Foursquare, with the social network announcing a US$15 million injection. According to the Wall Street Journal Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, Microsoft also signed a “multi-year contract to license Foursquare data in services such as its mobile operating system and Bing search engine.” Microsoft is said to be Foursquare’s single biggest source of revenue. As a result of the deal, Foursquare enables users to check-in from various locations, and has been running since 2009. Micrsoft said last year that its search site Bing was integrating Foursquare data via the Bing Sidebar.
The investment will be added to the $35 million investment round Foursquare announced last December and which valued the company at about $650 million. Other investors are: Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, DFJ Growth, SMALLCAP World Fund, and a handful of angel investors.
About Foursquare: Its Social Media Community is over 45 million people worldwide. Over 5 billion check-ins, with millions more every day. Its businesses community has over 1.6 million using the Merchant Platform (more information at foursquare.com/business). It has over 170 employees between headquarters in New York, an office in San Francisco, and a lovely outpost in London.
Foursquare co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai met in 2007 while working in the same office space (at different companies) in New York City. Launched Forsquare in 2009.
Source: Itwire.com/it-industry
