Fly Or Die: Swarm

Swarm is foursquare’s latest iteration of the check-in based location service, with a whole lot more social baked in. The idea of Swarm is to give you a sense of who’s near you, who will be near you, and some ideas for things to do.

It’s oddly addictive, which is a lot coming from me, as I’ve never even dabbled at the original foursquare. Still, that’s not to say there are no caveats.

For one, people who don’t live in densely populated cities won’t have a super great experience, simply because their network of friends is too spread out. Also, if you have too many friends hooked into your Swarm network, you can end up with a lot of useless information at your fingertips.

In the end, it’s a game of balancing people and places that are important to you, and cutting everything else out.

John isn’t as impressed as I am, but that may be related to his general lack of friendships. I, on the other hand, see great potential for the app if foursquare can find that easy balance between structured information and serendipity.