Foursquare Makes Software That Leverages Location Available To Third-Party Apps

In an effort to help developers and marketers offer their services to consumers at the right time and place, Foursquare has introduced Pilgrim SDK, a software development kit that can help third-party apps study and leverage the location of its users, sending them notifications anywhere in the world.

According to Tech Crunch, Pilgrim is “a decision-making engine that figures out where you’re going, where you’ve stopped to hang out and what you might be interested in nearby.”

While Pilgrim has been running on Foursquare City Guide and Swarm for quite some time (the technology which sends users push notifications when at a new restaurant or recommendations when in a new city), it is now being offered to marketers and developers who want to use it in their own apps. Pilgrim integrates with marketing automation software such as Urban Airship, Appboy, Localytics, mParticle and others.

What will surely make Pilgrim SDK an appealing investment is its accuracy. Using data from more than 11 billion check-ins over eight years has allowed Foursquare to help figure out when to send certain messages to its users.

In an example provided by the company in Venture Beat, a user can walk out of a hotel lobby in a new city and receive a notification from the hotel’s app providing them with suggestions of nearby places they might like, such as the closest yoga studio (for a yogi) or an area brewery (for a beer-lover).

“Over the past few years, we’ve been developing and refining the Pilgrim technology, and we know firsthand how powerful it is; it’s the foundation on which we have been able to build the success of our consumer apps and our enterprise and media solutions. Now we’re thrilled to share the magic of Foursquare externally through Pilgrim SDK,” said Foursquare President Steven Rosenblatt. “There is a whole world of millions of apps that could be serving its users with more contextually relevant content, and we’re excited for them to use Pilgrim SDK to be able to reach their users with the right message at the right time and place.”

The company hasn’t announced any pricing for Pilgrim SDK, but did reveal it will be structured in tiers. Some of the companies already implementing it include Capital One, SnipSnap, Raise, Retale and TouchTunes.