Bluetooth beacons are a growing trend in location-based advertising, with major companies like Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc investing in the technology. Beacons are also becoming an increasingly important tool for gathering data related to local trends and foot traffic, as they can track where the crowds are.

Now CultureMap, an online news and review publication with multiple localizations, has announced that it will be deploying several thousand iBeacons to restaurants and businesses around the country. The data from these beacons will provide CultureMap’s mobile app users with keen insights into local trends.

“The people who read CultureMap are interested in where to shop, where to eat and what to do,” Alexander Muse, co-founder of CultureMap’s Dallas-based parent company,, told the Dallas Business Journal. “That was the impetus behind this.”

CultureMap’s beacons will roll out to over 200,000 to restaurants and retail locations throughout the U.S., with around 9,000 being first deployed in Dallas, Austin, and Houston. The first 1000 beacons in each city will be installed free of cost for businesses, and while the first locations will be carefully chosen, CultureMap is also open to other businesses that would like to take part in the program.

The beacons themselves will be produced by Roximity, and the tracking software will created by Dallas-based startup Asset Panda. Muse said that launching CultureMap’s iBeacon program across the country without the help of Asset Panda would be “unthinkable.”

Aside from providing users with real-time data about local trends and events, CultureMap also hopes to eventually manipulate traffic by offering deals or other incentives that would draw crowds to specific locales. For example, the app could be used to host bar crawls in certain areas that could award participants with prizes.

CultureMap’s app is not currently available, but it will be released to users in Texas once the first 3,000 beacons are deployed later this month. The company also plans to launch its service in the top 20 markets in the U.S. by the end of next year.

The beacon market

Other companies have started testing the waters for beacon-assisted advertising and trend tracking, including both Facebook Inc and and Twitter Inc.

Facebook began testing out beacons as part of its Place Tips feature earlier this year, starting a pilot program in high profile locations throughout New York City, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Bowl.

“As we started building this, we realized we need more confidence to show you the right and relevant things,” Facebook product manager Mike LeBeau wrote at the time.

In April, Twitter Ventures and other tech companies invested $18 million in an investment round for beacon startup Swirl Networks, Inc. Swirl’s technology focuses on in-store advertising and is capable of displaying relevant ads based on the products directly in front of the consumer.

Swirl CEO Hilmi Ozguc admitted that people were still skeptical about this kind of localized advertising, but he said, “It’s a bit like e-commerce when people said, ‘I will never put my credit card online; it will get stolen!’ But as people use it, they will become more confident.”

Photo by jnxyz