Foursquare’s Version of the Talent Acquisition: Summer Interns

Foursquare, which just got its 10 millionth registered user and raised $50 million, has started inspiring an active ecosystem of developers, some of them indie projects (e.g. 4squareand7yearsago) and some of them companies (e.g. Sonar.me).

Now Foursquare has done something pretty interesting with a couple of its developers: Hired them for gigs as summer interns. CEO Dennis Crowley said as much during a chat on Thursday at his company’s newly opened San Francisco office.

Pierre Valade, who built an app called Agora that helps users find Twitter accounts to follow based on mutual Foursquare interests, joined the Foursquare product team as a summer intern in June. And Max Stoller, who created a tool called Don’t Eat At — it texts participating Foursquare users when they check in at New York restaurants with health code violations — started (also in June) as a summer intern on the Foursquare platform team.

Foursquare hasn’t yet made any acquisitions, talent or otherwise, Crowley said. It also doesn’t necessarily have a grand agenda for giving internships to developers.

Both Agora and Don’t Eat At, which are really more hacks than apps, are still live online.

Being a third-party developer on a social Web platform is tricky; sometimes the API that feeds you turns around and copies you, bans you or buys your competitors (sorry to bash on Twitter, but … yes). Other times you create an immense business (Hey Zynga, how ’bout that S-1 filing already!). And other times you get a summer job.