Foursquare is planning to launch its new Swarm app on Thursday (tomorrow). Yet the company is having a bit of trouble keeping its pants on, so to speak, and has been revealing features all of Wednesday (today), including planning, neighborhood sharing, and check-in search.
When Foursquare first revealed Swarm at the start of the month, it said the new app would launch in the “coming weeks.” On Friday, that timeframe changed to “next week,” and now it has changed once again to tomorrow:
We're going live tomorrow on iOS and Android! Check out some of our new features on http://t.co/kjV2Zr4zn1
— Swarm (@swarmapp) May 14, 2014
Now for the new features. First up, there is plans, which are visible to all your friends in your city. Unlike most event systems, Swarm doesn’t offer you an invite list, and the company says you can leave your suggestion “as open-ended as you want.”
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Foursquare offered some examples that worked with its early group of testers:
- “Beer?”
- “Who’s up for drinks after work?”
- “Anyone want to see Godzilla this weekend?”
- “Got two extra CHVRCHES tickets for tonight. Anybody want them?”
- “Weekend recommendations? My parents are in town…”
- “Birthday drinks Saturday, 9pm, @Ace Bar. Come join!”
Next is neighborhood sharing. Instead of texting all of your friends to see who’s around, this Swarm feature shows friends in your city that you are in the neighborhood, and vice versa.
You can turn the feature on or off by swiping right at the top of any screen. It reminds us of Facebook’s recently launch Nearby Friends feature.
Lastly, Swarm includes what Foursquare says is one of the most requested features “of all time”: history search. Using the feature is simple: just tap over to your profile, search for anything (a city, a person, or a type of place), and you’ll get back a list of all your old check-ins.
Swarm will naturally include other features as well – this is just a taste in advance of the big reveal tomorrow. We’ll keep you posted as soon as the app is out.
See also – Foursquare is splitting its service into two apps: Swarm for check-ins and Foursquare for discovery and Ahead of Swarm’s release next week, Foursquare freezes mayors ‘for the time being’ and drops ousting feature
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