Foursquare Updates iOS App, But No “New Features” Are Present. Perhaps A Bug Fix For “Explore”?

Explore is becoming the focus for foursquare. You can tell that with every release and update that the company has made the last few months. Recently, the iOS app got a simpler design treatment on the Explore tab, along with a new way to find cool places to go and eat.

This appears to be a re-release of a previous update, perhaps with some bug fixes that aren’t documented in the following copy:

With this release, we’ve updated the Explore tab with a simpler design and brand new search categories to make finding great places even easier. Try it out!

✭ Instantly see friends and top suggestions nearby
✭ Search for a specific place, like “Joe’s Diner”
✭ Search for whatever you’re craving, like “Mexican” or “nachos”
✭ Try our new search categories! See only places you’ve saved to your lists, places you haven’t been to, places you have been to, or places friends have been.
✭ As always, get directions, menus, hours, photos, tips and more.

It’s also way faster, with a bunch of design tweaks and under-the-hood performance improvements (including on your new iPhone 5 and iOS 6).

For the first time, I’ve played around with foursquare on the iPhone 5 and it is indeed blazingly fast. What did the company sneak into this update that made us all act? Things, maybe.

Perhaps there were some hidden things, such as algorithm hook tweaks, as this fella suggests:

@TechCrunch @thatdrew I honestly don't notice much difference. Seems more like its "picking" places based on my "preferences."

—
Morton Levitt (@levitm1) October 01, 2012

UPDATE: Seems like foursquare tried to slip in a few bug fixes:

@thatdrew it was just some small bug fixes, so we left in the old copy (as not everyone had updated to 5.3 yet). sorry for the confusion.

—
Jon Steinback (@itsmejon) October 01, 2012

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Crunchbase

• FOURSQUARE

Company: foursquare

Website: foursquare.com

Launch Date: April 16, 2013

Funding: $112M

Foursquare is a geographical location based social network that incorporates gaming elements. Users share their location with friends by “checking in” via a smartphone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can connect their Foursquare accounts to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which can update when a check in is registered. By checking in a certain number of times, or in different locations, users can collect virtual badges. In addition, users...

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