• Daily Finance, Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:23 AM

The line between location-based social networking and commerce is continuing to blur, insists Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowly. In the near future, Crowley said at an industry event this week, businesses will let consumers link their credit cards to social networks, and offer various incentives for actively promoting an advertiser's products and services. For Foursquare, Crowley is presently exploring models in which local store owners can offer incentives to users who "tweet" or "check-in" each time they frequent a location.

"If you see some people checking in at a place all the time, it could potentially pique interest and drive traffic," Crowley said, according to Daily Finance. Crowley, along with his industry peers, said the next key development in social networking would be finding a way to link the many different types of information such sites collect from consumers to determine which consumer behaviors and advertiser actions increase the probability of a sale, Daily Finance reports. "Such a development would help companies determine the return on investment for their social networking strategies," it notes.

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