Foursquare Labs Inc. said it will charge

On June 27, according to the Wall Street Journal Web site, Foursquare Labs Inc. (Foursquare) said that in order to use the collected user sign-up information to generate income, the company will charge a large number of businesses using its restaurants, shops and other databases.

Jeffrey Glueck, Foursquare COO, said the company is in talks with companies that heavily use their data to pay for or exchange services. Foursquare will come to an agreement with various developers, a move that will affect less than 1% of the 63,000 companies that use Foursquare data.

Changes in this policy may jeopardize the relationship between Foursquare and external developers who rely on their data. Popular apps, including Pinterest, Twitter's Vine and Yahoo's Flickr, use Foursquare data.

But charging data may help Foursquare gain the revenue it needs to back up its free mobile app. Despite the increasing popularity of Foursquare, with more than 50 million registered users, Foursquare has not developed a sustainable business model for local advertising for years. According to sources, in the last round of financing in December last year, Foursquare valuation fell, indicating that venture capital firms have increasingly lost patience.

Foursquare did not disclose its revenue, Foursquare, according to the financial status of the source revealed last year, the company's revenue last year from 2012 to 2 million US dollars (about 12.31 million yuan) to 15 million -2000 million (about Renminbi 92.32 million yuan -1.23 billion yuan). Gluck said that this year's Foursquare revenue will grow more than doubled, paid data will become an important part of Foursquare business.

Gluck said the paid data business, similar to the deals Foursquare and Microsoft had earlier this year, will pay for the use of Foursquare in products such as Bing search engine. Microsoft also invested in Foursquare at the time.

Foursquare warned developers in a user agreement that it "reserves the right to charge for its data." Gluck said Foursquare plans to continue to provide free data for the vast majority of developers, "We are still firmly support the ecological chain of developers."

Yahoo, Pinterest and Twitter spokesman did not reach a license agreement with Foursquare to comment. (bamboo)