Foursquare’s check-in focused app, Swarm, got a major visual and user experience update today. The changes bring a focus to a timeline view of check-ins, new categories, and an overall updated UI.
Avid Foursquare junkies (myself included), rejoice – mayorships are back, just now in the Swarm app. You can become the mayor of a place by checking into it more than anyone else in the last 30 days, and only one check-in per day counts towards your rank.
Earlier this year, Foursquare pulled a Facebook and split its mobile app in half with check-ins moving to a new app branded as Swarm and location discovery and recommendations becoming the sole focus of its Foursquare-branded app.
Both apps were iPhone-only for iOS users as Foursquare relied on a mobile site for iPad users wanting to check-in from a tablet, but now that Foursquare has become a full-fledged Yelp competitor with its own dedicated app to finding new places to travel and venues to review, Foursquare is giving users a native iPad app as well.
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Earlier this year Foursquare announced its plans to split check-ins and social features from location discovery and reviewing features from its mobile apps. Swarm, the new app focused on check-ins, launched earlier this year in May while Foursquare gave its users some time to become familiar with having two apps for two different purposes.
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Location sharing and reviews service Foursquare recently announced its plans to split its mobile app in half as it introduces a new app called Swarm that will soon be the only place to check-in to locations using Foursquare’s service.
Foursquare will instead focus its main app on reviews and location discovery and plans to remove check-in functionality later this year. Check-ins, mayorships, location sharing, and other social features will instead be focused in Swarm going forward. It’s a big move in terms of risking App Store ranking and discoverability as well as branding, but Facebook has practiced a somewhat similar strategy by developing its messaging experience in Facebook Messenger rather than the primary Facebook app where the feature can also be found.
For its part, Foursquare has already announced a number of features users of the previous app have requested that will be available in Swarm including complete check-in history and neighborhood sharing.
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