A decade after splitting its city guide feature from its social check-in service, Foursquare is streamlining further. The company will sunset the City Guide app on December 15, with the web version following in early 2025. Meanwhile, the popular Swarm check-in app will stay active, potentially receiving an update to enhance the user experience.
Much has changed with the app since Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai first made waves at South by Southwest in 2011. It outlasted rival Gowalla, went viral for its mayorship and gamified location-based check-ins, and garnered headlines for the company’s ability to predict retail buying patterns accurately. Along the way, Foursquare was amassing a trove of location data that likely might rival Google’s.
The Foursquare City Guide was designed to compete against Yelp and Facebook. Again, thanks to its location data collection, Foursquare could make more relevant recommendations to users.
The company claims the decision to shutter its City Guide was “not made lightly, but it is a necessary step to prioritize key initiatives that we believe will have a greater impact and better serve our customers.” It did say an updated Swarm app will be released in early 2025, though it didn’t preview the changes.
Many on social media mourned the demise of the Foursquare City Guide. Personally, I’m glad to hear Swarm was spared the axe. However, the renewed investment in the location app makes me wonder if the City Guide shuttering was because it wasn’t doing enough to attract location data. Any failure could jeopardize Foursquare’s enterprise play, which it embraced in 2019.
Foursquare notes that users can still export their data, even after City Guide’s shutdown. The company denied any plans to discontinue this feature, mainly because the process includes Swarm data.
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