Foursquare's Pilgrim SDK Lets Developers Leverage Its Location Awareness Tech

Foursquare has been around for quite a long time and has a huge treasure trove of location data that any big tech company could be envious of. The company kept this data a well-guarded secret, but now it plans to expand its use cases by making it available to third parties. The company has released the SDK for its location awareness tech Pilgrim, so that other developers can leverage its accuracy.

The company says Pilgrim's location accuracy is top notch, with claims of it being able to even recognise whether you're in your loft or underneath your building. Various app developers could use this tech to incorporate several new cool features, like a location-based game could up its ante by several notches and adjust surroundings accordingly, and fitness apps could ascertain your weight loss goals on the basis of which place you ate at, Foursquare says.

The Pilgrim SDK will give developers the ability to add contextual awareness to their apps. For example, the app with Pilgrim integration will be able to tell whether the phone just walked into a bar, a butcher, or a coffee shop. Was this phone inside a gym, a clothing store, or a sandwich shop earlier today? Is this phone inside a Dunkin' Donuts or a Target right now? This kind of accuracy could do wonders for many app developers, and the intelligence they could gather in the long run.

Foursquare is limiting access to this tech to a few developers now. "We're limiting this to a select group of developers to start~CHECK~-~CHECK~slow and steady, experimentation and learning~CHECK~-~CHECK~but the long term plan is to make the SDK as accessible as our API, which is currently used by more than 100K developers and apps including Snapchat, Twitter, Apple, and Samsung," the company co-founder Dennis Crowley notes in his medium post.

Foursquare may look to finally monetise from its place data, something that it was anticipated to do since a very long time. If app developers find Pilgrim to be an integral part of their apps, they will be willing to pay for it.