They're selling location trend data to anyone who will buy it. Retail operators (like Apple) may buy it, but the more typical customers for these types of services are hedge funds and other traders who want an edge. They'll correlate check-in volume with iPhone sales, for instance, to more accurately estimate Apple's quarterly revenues before they're announced.
> Google Search shows users the most popular times for some of their favorite businesses and institutions. When users search for places like a restaurant, bar, or gym on Google, they’ll see when their destination typically draws the largest crowds.
> To determine popular times, Google uses data from users who have chosen to store their location information on Google servers. Popular times are based on average popularity over the last several weeks. Not all businesses will have a popular times graph; the graph will only appear for businesses whose hours are listed on Google and about which Google has sufficient popularity data.
> Is this the same trend data Google is showing in location search engine results?
Very similar idea, but different source (4SQ app versus Android/Google apps). Also I'd imagine the 4SQ enterprise offering has a lot more ways to slice and dice the data so that it's useful for business.
