Foursquare and Vlingo are teaming up to battle bigger competitors and the companies are integrating voice controls to do things like having audible check ins.
Despite what it says publicly, Foursquare is facing pressure from the new Facebook Places. Foursquare will need to add its own differentiated services to keep users from just using Facebook’s location service.
Vlingo is also facing a stiff challenge from Google and its Voice Actions for Android. In fact, once the search giant released its voice app, Vlingo made its Android free to counter Google.
The two are teaming up to bring multiple voice services to Foursquare. You’ll be able to use your voice to check in to locations, locate your friends and send shout outs to friends and acquaintences.
“Location and social networking have become an integral part of consumers’ everyday lives—so having a strategic alliance with foursquare to provide users with a simple, easy way to connect with their friends is a natural fit for Vlingo,” said Hadley Harris, VP of Marketing at Vlingo, in a prepared statement. “Vlingo’s mission is to quickly connect our customers to the people, businesses, and services that are important to them. Integrating with foursquare’s industry leading platform is a natural way to help facilitate those connections.”
The Vlingo for Foursquare voice features will be available for download today for Android devices with 2.0 and above.
I spoke to Vlingo before this release and I believe the company is in an interesting position because voice controls are becoming an incredibly important part of mobile devices. Apple recently purchased the voice service Siri and this will soon make its way into the overall iOS platform. As mentioned above, Google is also making voice control a bigger part of the Android platform.
Vlingo will try and stand out by integrating with social networks and providing a good end-user experience. Look for this type of voice integration to come to other platforms soon, as well as new features over the next few months.