By Laurie Segall @CNNMoneyTech May 23, 2011: 5:13 PM ET
INQ's Cloud Touch phone adds Foursquare to the mix.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Remember INQ Mobile's Facebook phone?
Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley announced at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 that Cloud Touch, the INQ phone known for its Facebook integration, will use Foursquare to power its location services.
"We were excited to announce at TechCrunch Disrupt that INQ chose Foursquare to power their phones' location services, with deep integration of Foursquare sharing and recommendations," the company posted on its blog. (Everyone is making Facebook phones!)
The Foursquare integration on the Cloud Touch mobile device will pull data from Foursquare's open interface, allowing users to check in and explore different venues without having to open up the app.
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The added social layer uses Foursquare's crowdsourced data to serve up recommendations based on a user's location, their check-in history, and their friends' check-ins.
The INQ Cloud Phone is one of few mobile devices known for its deep integration into Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android operating system. INQ Founder and CEO Frank Meehan hopes to create a more visual mobile experience, by advancing the integration of Internet to mobile. His ultimate goal for mobile? "Let's take all this data, and visualize it in a magazine style format," he says.
Since the Cloud Touch allows the Foursquare program to run without users logging in every time, Crowley expects to see deeper Foursquare integration for users who don't check in as often.
"Foursquare's great for users that are logged in, " he told CNNMoney. "But we have a lot of people that sign up and don't check in."
The founder also rattled off the latest Foursquare growth stats. Nearly 50 percent of usage happens outside the U.S., Crowley says. Foursquare is also approaching 10 million users with around 3 million check-ins a day.
Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)
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