Foursquare Announces Swarm

I couldn’t be more confused this morning. Foursquare just announced a new check-in app called Swarm. Swarm allows you to see who is nearby, similar to Facebook’s Nearby Friends feature but limited to the people you add on Foursquare, which is kind of nice for the privacy conscious. I already use Foursquare to check-in to places and keep a map of all the locations I’ve been to, plus it syncs with my Facebook Map so I can easily go back and find all the places I’ve eaten during my recent trips to Europe when my friends ask for a recommendation in Paris. It’s great and works like a champ. About a year ago or so ago Foursquare even started recommending dishes and telling me about nearby places when it sensed I was in a neighborhood nearby. It was awesome functionality, and I’ve used it as a “recommender” on a lot of different occasions. Certainly a lot more than I use Yelp. Which is why I’m surprised that they are seemingly trying to kill it off.

 

Foursquare sees Yelp as the enemy, and is pivoting Foursquare to square off (see what I did there?) directly against it. They’re taking check-ins out, and putting more context and location-focused suggestions in. The check-ins are apparently migrating to the Swarm app, which will allow your friends to see your “general” location, and also allow you to check in to specific places if you so desire (the basic functionality of Foursquare). In the video above, David Crowley, Foursquare's CEO says,  “People always think, ‘Oh, Foursquare, that’s the check-in app. Oh, Foursquare, that’s the thing where you check in and get badges’, and I think if that’s your perception of what we’re doing, you’re missing like 90% of the vision, and 90% of what the company is here to do”. The problem is, that’s what Foursquare was great at doing.

Foursquare showed hints in the last year that it wanted to go head-to-head with Yelp, by sending push-notifications when you were near restaurants that it had menus and recommendations for. This worked pretty well and though often it sent me those notifications after I’d already ordered, it would cause me to look at the app and see if anyone had any recommendations on dessert. It was still a “functional win”, in that I was opening the app, looking at the restaurant, and using that information for my current or future visit.

What puzzles me about the split is that it sounds like Foursquare will no longer allow you to check in to places, only Swarm will allow you to do that. It seems a bit odd that a company that’s collected data from over 5 Billion check-ins would abandon them in hopes of becoming the world’s best menu app. Foursquare has recently had trouble with new adoption, possibly because security-conscious individuals didn’t want their friends seeing where they were, so it’s strange to know that they are launching a new app, which they hope will be adopted more swiftly and collect the check-ins from there. I'm hopeful that the two “apps” will share data so that Foursquare can continue building its giant databases, but what if Swarm fails to take off? Will Foursquare roll check-ins back in? And what does this mean for the apps that tie-in to Foursquare for check-ins? I use Aviate on my phone and it ties in to Foursquare beautifully, so does Moves. Do those now have to re-integrate with Swarm? And who came up with the name Swarm? Every retailed business probably wants to get swarmed by people, but think of the bees. They have swarms, and they’re out to get you.

If 90% of what Foursquare is trying to do like Crowley says, is give you advice and show you what’s around you, why spin-off the 10% that has given the app its popularity and users? Why not instead redesign the app to focus on the hints, menus, and notifications, but still allow you to check-in? Granted, Foursquare is planning a re-design to go along with the Swarm launch, but if that re-design gets rid of check-ins, the thing that made Foursquare “a thing”, might start falling by the wayside.

I hope Foursquare knows what they are doing by spinning this off. I’ll try Swarm when it comes out, but if it fails to speak to my current Foursquare app and share the maps of places that I’ve checked in at, I may have to go back to checking in on Facebook. And nobody wants to do that.