Foursquare has completely revamped its app, changing everything from photo placement to design touches and increasing its personalization.
The newly launched app has a refreshed color scheme in pink and blue and has lost the usual check-in feature, TechCrunch reported.
A New York Times blog compared the updated Foursquare to a digital travel blog that encourages users to explore the area based on their tastes. The app will now implement past check-ins from users to recommend restaurants and other nearby spots.
Foursquare's signature check-in has now been moved to the new app Swarm, which is intended to provide the social aspect in a separate location. The change allowed the Foursquare team to expand beyond just check-ins.
"We've just got so much data on where people want to go and what they want to do, and we haven't really been able to flex that in our original app until now," said Dennis Crowley, Foursquare's chief executive, as quoted by the Times' Bits blog.
With the update, Foursquare has positioned itself squarely in competition with Yelp, which guides users to nearby restaurants. The company unveiled the new logo last month, spotlighting the split into Foursquare and Swarm.
Wired pointed out that the new app could be a huge privacy invasion if the data shared by users ends up in the wrong hands. Because check-ins are now separate, users are no longer voluntarily sharing their location; in the update, location-tracking is automatic.
According to Foursquare, the more intimate version of the app is intended to be personalized as it constantly tracks your location.
"To actually get an app to talk to you like a friend would talk to you. That's what we're going at here, and I think we've done a really good job of it," said Crowley, as quoted by Wired.
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