In a further extension of its commitment to supporting application developer innovation in Canada and to driving additional potential leads to its advertisers, Yellow Pages Group (YPG) announced today its participation in the venue harmonization project of foursquare, a location-based social networking site.

Like contributing partners in this project, YPG adds to the authentication and accuracy of business locations in the foursquare database, as foursquare breaks out venues into a separate API, making location-based app development even easier for developers.

“Through agreements such as this one, we continue to increase the value proposition of our public API, YellowAPI.com, and multiply traffic driven to our advertisers by making sure their businesses appear in major online and social networking destinations,” said Nicolas Gaudreau, Vice-President, Digital & Print Media, Acquisition & Retention at Yellow Pages Group.

YPG is the first Canadian company to participate in foursquare’s venue harmonization project, rendering 1.5 million Canadian business listings and information accessible to the social networking site through YellowAPI.com, the company’s open platform application programming interface.

“We not only want to make location integration as easy as possible for developers, but we want to make sure we’re providing accurate and verified information. We’re really pleased that Yellow Pages Group has come on as our Canadian partner in authenticating local business listings,” said Eric Friedman, Director of Business Development for foursquare.

The harmonization will also allow the hundreds of developers using YellowAPI.com to integrate foursquare functionality into their apps.

To view a video on YellowAPI.com featuring interviews with some of the app developers who use it, click here.