Why the original travel app is partnered with so many brands and integrated into so much technology... Kristen Vasan, Director of Strategic Platform Partnerships for Foursquare (a technology company that enriches consumer experiences and informs business decisions through a deep understanding of location intelligence), joins John Matson in the MouthMedia Network studio powered by Sennheiser. In this episode: The state of personalization in the travel industry, gained some momentum Foursquare was previously thought as a social networking app, but is a contextually aware location platform that sits on top of some of the biggest brands' tech Can build a contextually aware map of where people go People comparing brands to one another are looking at how technological experiences compare to one another  The risk of becoming the best tech company instead of best service Going from the check in app for locations,  and how Foursquare  pivoted to become a huge player in the enterprise location space How their API plays into geo-locations for images and social media The goal to give marketers the ability to "bake" location tech, to know where you’ve stopped, see the venue where you are, and "tap you on the shoulder" Giving people the ability to be present and enjoy life, and only use phone when it matters most How Foursquare reached 1 billion consumers Brands building loyalty, having an understanding of offline behavior, a lot is still left to be done in that space How business travel is different than personal travel Seeing location trails of consumers and telling stories about where they go People look to Foursquare as the original travel app Are travel startups able to use Foursquare’s SDK and try to iterate on it Foursquare's database of over 105M places globally you can ingest and share with world And  -- a volcano