Deal or No Deal? Foursquare Hopes Users “Buy Into” Offers from New Partners LivingSocial, Gilt City

Mobile “check-in” platform foursquare announced Monday on its blog that foursquare Specials will begin featuring this week discounted vouchers from five daily deals sites:

“LivingSocial, with their handpicked experiences that you can share with friends, all over the world;

Gilt City, which unlocks insider access to the best of your city, like exclusive menus and tickets to sold-out shows;

zozi, focusing exclusively on unique experiences and activities like moonlight kayaking, cycling and wine tasting, and shark diving;

BuyWithMe, for discovering the best experiences in 13 cities across the U.S.; and,

AT&T Interactive (Deal of the Day from YP.com), with over 50% off their daily deals for real life in Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Los Angeles.”

(Notably absent are other major players including Groupon, Yelp and Google Offers.)

In the Explore tab, foursquare will present users with customized Specials, based off criteria such as where friends have checked in. Users will be able to purchase the offer without leaving the foursquare app. The feature is now available on BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone, and in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

But will foursquare users actually take to the new voucher feature? TechCrunch’s Rocky Agrawal has doubts:

“With these deals, Foursquare is attempting to solve two problems: liquidity in deals and its own lack of a revenue model,” Agrawal writes. “However, I see three key challenges with Foursquare deals: 1) Confusion among the various deal types 2) Competition with itself and 3) Competition with the big guys.”

Click here to read more of Agrawal’s thoughts on issues foursquare might face as it seeks to ignite this new feature.