Title seems to be misleading. The article body states that they are offering ad targeting using checkin information. Such an arrangement does not involve the sale of the checkin information, not even access to it.
Once Facebook acquired Gowalla and Glancee, the writing was always on the wall for Foursquare. They need revenue as their business model is still shaky at best and seeing Facebook cannibalize this opportunity must have been a deciding factor. The irony is that they should probably should have sold to Facebook (who reportedly offered them $120M). Facebook would probably have done a better job monetizing check-ins with their current advertising clients than Foursquare will ever be able to. Too little too late IMHO.<p>As for the user, if people don't realize by now that they are the product, by receiving a service for free, then they probably deserve to be taken advantage of.<p>There's no such thing as a free lunch if you check-in ;-)
I am totally fine with this; one of the things (I) assumed 4sq would do with all the checkin data.<p>It is strange this article makes it seem like some dirty little secret that companies like 4sq need to make money.<p>Either the product costs money, or you are the product.
Would an accurate analogy be an old fashioned magazine article, where as far as I know the advertiser does not get a copy of the entire subscription list personal details, but they do get proof that each subscriber got one copy of their ad?<p>Maybe the old fashioned yellow pages paper phone book is an even better example. All I know for certain is everyone in zip code abcde just got a copy of the ad. That doesn't mean they have a list of everyone in zipcode abcde.