Foursquare today announced it would be unbundling its location-based service into two separate mobile apps; one will be called Swarm, while the other retains the original Foursquare branding.
The idea is to break its business in half. Foursquare started out as a check-in app, allowing you to easily broadcast your location to friends and family. This will continue to exist under Swarm, a new Android and iOS app due in the coming weeks. A version for Windows Phone will follow shortly afterwards.
Over the last few years, Foursquare has slowly shifted the focus and feature set of its mobile apps. The company wants to be a location-based recommendation service, suggesting the best restaurants, bars, coffee shops and attractions based on your preferences and check-in history.
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“We believe local search should be personalized to your tastes and informed by the people you trust,” the company said. “The opinions of actual experts should matter, not just strangers. An app should be able answer questions like ‘give me a great date dinner spot’ and not just ‘tell me the nearest gas station.’”
To this end, Foursquare is working on a new, discovery-focused app (simply called Foursquare) that it hopes to launch this summer. The New York-based company says the two will work seamlessly together, but make no mistake – this is an effort by Foursquare to refocus its core service around location-based recommendations. In the process, it hopes to finally supplant Yelp.
If you’re intrigued by the new Swarm app, Foursquare has created a page where you can submit your email address for further updates.
Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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