Foursquare

In April this year Airbnb launched its Neighbourhood guides where locals share their knowledge of where they live to enable people visiting cities from Seoul to San Francisco to get the best experience from their trips. To help illustrate these guides, Airbnb has struck a deal with Foursquare. From now on, photos uploaded to Foursquare could make their way into an Airbnb guide.

Foursquare might not strike you immediately as the most obvious source of high quality images to illustrate a city guide, but if you step back and think about it from Airbnb’s perspective, it makes perfect sense. First, Airbnb’s guides are intended to give guests and visitors a local’s eye view of somewhere. Foursquare-shared images do just that. These aren’t perfectly lit, carefully framed professional photos presenting a polished version of a pub, restaurant, or landmark. These are smartphone photos hastily snapped in between your first and second glasses of prosecco and just before you dive headlong into a bowl of gnocchi the size of your face. They are, to use the word of the moment, authentic.