FourSquare News: FourSquare Becomes Two

FourSquare used to be “The” social app a few years ago. Lately, because of other, cooler similar apps, like Apple’s “Find My Friends” or Facebook’s check-in features, FourSquare has been left behind a little. It’s no longer the number one app used to see where your friends are at. Because of the growing number of apps that are very similar, FourSquare felt that it needed to bring a change to their services or risk to be forgotten.

FourSquare news: FourSquare is splitting into two separate social apps. One of it is called Swarm and it will be the location-based app. The other half is called FourSquare and will focus on recommendations and location-based tips. Some say that this could be a tricky move for FourSquare but the 5-year-old app believes that in order to be competitive in the mobile world, one has to always come up with something new. We totally agree.

FourSquare writes on their blog that: We spend a lot of time talking to people about Foursquare, and we constantly hear they use Foursquare for two things – to keep up and meet up with their friends, and to discover great places. Every month, tens of millions of people open up the app to do each. But, as it turns out, each time you open the app, you almost always do just one of those things.” This was one of the reasons for the splitting up. FourSquare said that they have a lot of ideas and changes for both new apps, changes that could not have been done if the app remained as one.

FourSquare news: here’s how the two separate apps will work out:

Swarm will be used for the social aspects of the service. With Swarm, users will not show their exact location, but rather the neighborhood or the city for their friends to see. This one is certainly an improvement because, frankly, the previous “exact location” feature had some privacy issues. The other half, FourSquare will focus on recommendations and location-based suggestions. This app will remember location preferences, for example, after you checked-in in five Chinese restaurants, the app will automatically search for a nearby Chinese restaurant wherever your location is.