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Microsoft has just signed a deal to invest $15 million in Foursquare and to license the company’s location data. While the deal could benefit both companies, ReadWrite‘s Owen Thomas says the biggest winner from the agreement might be developers.
Many mobile development firms already incorporate Foursquare’s geotagging API into their apps, but that’s just a small piece of what Foursquare can do. Apps could also query Foursquare data to figure out how often and when people visit certain places and make recommendations as a result. If Microsoft begins building Foursquare capabilities into Windows and/or its development tools, that could make it easier for developers to create contextually aware apps with anticipatory computing features.
