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Foursquare Giving Coupons A Go

  • BetaBeat, Wednesday, May 9, 2012 11:56 AM

Foursquare is reportedly getting into the coupon business, and soon plans to let merchants buy special placement for promotions of personalized local offers via a redesigned version of its app. Any Foursquare user will be able to see the specials, although they’ll need to “check in” to specific venues to redeem them. “This is just one prong of Foursquare’s new money-making strategy,” according to BetaBeat. “Though the actual revenue it will produce is rather questionable, the company also announced last week that it would charge $10 to businesses for instant verification of their accounts.” Bigger picture, BetaBeat remarks on Web companies’ varied monetization efforts.

“It’s been a tumultuous past few weeks for New York startups, some of whom are scrapping long-held ideals in order to seek profitability. Looks like it’s time to finally make some money.” Most recently, Tumblr announced the debut of paid ads, which represented a strategy reversal for the blogging platform. In fact, Tumblr founder David Karp once held that advertising kind of made him sick.

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