In response, we develop a comparative analysis of two platforms – Foursquare and Google – and examine how each extracts and uses geocoded user data. By not paying due and careful attention to the specifics of data extraction strategies, political and cultural economic analyses of new media services risk eliding key differences between new media platforms, and their respective software systems, patterns of consumer use, and individual revenue models. Informed by recent calls for ‘medium-specific analysis’, we build on earlier work to argue that social media companies actively extract location data for commercial advantage in quite specific ways. This article examines the growing commercial significance of location data. As the richness of this geocoded information increases, so the commercial value of this location information also increases. While locations are still defined by fixed longitude/latitude coordinates, they now increasingly ‘acquire dynamic meaning as a consequence of the constantly changing location-based information that is attached to them’ becoming ‘a near universal search string for the world’s data’. ![]() ![]() The rise of smart phone use, and its convergence with mapping infrastructures and large search and social media corporations, has led to a commensurate rise in the importance of location. Consequently, we draw from the work of Leah A Lievrouw to examine how dual tensions of contingency/determination shape how these applications are designed and used, and how both design and use continue to evolve in response to various external pressures. A social shaping-inflected approach is productive in this context in that it stresses how many of these developments and strategic reorientations are not just in response to shareholder and investor pressures, they are also fundamentally shaped by and made in response to the fluctuating demands of end-users within a complicated, competitive and continuously evolving geomedia ecosystem. These include, most recently, Yelp’s integration of artificial intelligence/machine learning techniques to parse, sift and order users’ posts and Foursquare’s development of its Pilgrim SDK (software design kit) to power the location services of other platforms, like Tinder and Snap. With Yelp approaching its 15th year of service and Foursquare approaching its 10th anniversary, this article provides a timely opportunity to (re-)examine the significance of Yelp and Foursquare and the many reconfigurations both firms have made to their services since their launch. In this article, we use this perspective as a point of departure for a social shaping of technology-informed analysis of two key geomedia platforms: Yelp and Foursquare. In their book, Location-Based Social Media: Space, Time and Identity, Leighton Evans and Michael Saker remark on the apparent ‘death’ of location-based social networks, suggesting that location-based social networks can now be understood as ‘a form of “zombie-media” that animates and haunts other media platforms’.
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