• Telegraph (UK) et al., Monday, July 19, 2010 12:08 PM

Watch out Facebook and Twitter. Foursquare is presently exploring data-sharing partnerships with "everyone" in the search space, including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, according to Dennis Crowley, co-founder of the location-based social network.

"Our data generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search," Crowley tells the UK's Telegraph. "Twitter helped the world and the search engines know what people are talking about. Foursquare would allow people to search for the types of place people are going to -- and where is trending -- not what."

"There's no question that the Foursquare data are valuable, like the Facebook 'Like' button," writes Search Engine Land. "They could show venues that are being visited in 'real time' as well as user-generated 'tips' that Foursquare shows about the venues."

"This could truly be a powerful service," suggests The Next Web. However, Foursquare becoming the exclusive provider of location-based data to the top search engines is unlikely, it adds. "We'd imagine search engines will opt to take data from other check-in services such as Gowalla and Twitter's new, currently US-only Places feature as well to improve the amount of data available ... Google could use data from its Latitude service combined with its own place database to add even more diversity to its own results."

What's more, "While Dennis makes a fair point about adding a new layer to the search experience, it would only work with mass adoption and constant use of Foursquare," writes TechEye.net. "It'd also mean larger venues with more marketing clout and headline bands would see a trending stream of people that could potentially swamp and drown out smaller independent venues."

And what about privacy concerns? "We can anonymise data and use it to show venues which are trending at that moment," Crowley assures The Telegraph.

All told "It's an attractive idea in theory, though it's difficult to see this data being widely useful just yet," concludes Business Insider.

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