One of the most interesting things about Foursquare is the local venue deals offered through the service. Unfortunately, the only way to find them is either to check-in to a place at or near where one of the deals is, or to check out Foursquare’s Businesses page, which just has a huge list of all their deals in every city. But now there’s a better way built using Yahoo Pipes.
Arthur Klepchukov implemented a pipe which simply takes the Foursquare Businesses page and runs it through some filters to get at the new deals in certain cities. As you can see, in Klepchukov’s version, he’s just looking for new deals in Oakland, Berkley, and Emoryville. But since it’s built with Yahoo Pipes, anyone can take it and easily plug in any city they wish to monitor.
It makes some sense that Foursquare wouldn’t more clearly promote which deals are going on where — after all, most venues probably don’t want everyone in a city trying to take advantage of the deal (much like any other form of coupon). But this information can be very useful to people in various cities trying to decide where to go for lunch, for example.
And with the number of these deals quickly increasing in a number of cities, it’s not a bad idea to track them so you don’t miss the really good ones. After all, everyone love free beer.
[photo: flickr/Schlüsselbein2007]