As Foursquare evolves, it wants to help you find either new places to check out or lead you to places where your friends have already been. Mixed in with that is recommendation technology to show you places that you might be interested in based on where you’ve been before. Today, Foursquare updated its iOS and Android apps with an advanced search option that lets you control how the service seeks… → Read More
Though Foursquare is now busy trying to take on Yelp, one of its more rewarding, but personal, use cases (now that the fervor around badges and mayorships has died down), is its ability to add insight and data around your check-ins. Often after registering your location, the app rewards you with a little encouragement or commentary via a pop-up message. Today, the service is making these little… → Read More
Fred Wilson, legendary New York venture capitalist and partner at Union Square Ventures, is the latest VC to highlight his interest in startups that help move money, “an area that is still very much up for grabs,” in his opinion. “Money is information, like bits,” he said today, giving currency a spin that puts it in a continuum with the many blogging and content companies that his firm has… → Read More
During our Disrupt event today, New York City company Foursquare’s co-founder Dennis Crowley spoke about how people are talking about the company these days. One of the interesting things about the company is its strategy to be the “location layer” of the Internet. For four years, the company has been trapping all of this location data, tips and social graph information. On its… → Read More
Foursquare today launched redesigned venue pages to focus on its Explore and Discover functionality, bringing them more in line with its homepage. The changes, which come two weeks after the company raised another round of funding and released an updated iOS app, are designed to capitalize on the traffic that Foursquare gets from Google, which has doubled the site’s traffic over the past… → Read More
Foursquare, the social, location-based check-in app that has been pivoting into becoming a more of platform for local search, has finally closed its Series D round of funding. Foursquare tells TechCrunch that it is $41 million, led by Silver Lake Partners in the form of a multi-year loan from the Silver Lake Waterman growth debt fund; and convertible debt from existing investors Andreessen… → Read More
We all know the Foursquare story quite well: The app launched at SXSW four years ago, and a fair amount of people have been using it to check-in ever since. The company is releasing a new version of its flagship iOS app, which will put those 3.5 billion check-ins in the forefront with search and explore functionality. It’s a move that we saw coming ever since they did practically the same… → Read More
This hasn’t been a great year for Foursquare. “Check-ins are no longer what they used to be,” as Ingrid Lunden observed last month. There seems to be a general consensus that “Foursquare keeps resembling Yelp more and more…” but that comparison isn’t necessarily flattering, especially since there’s little doubt that Yelp has much greater public mindshare.
Then former Square COO and current… → Read More
Editor’s note: Jonathan Barouch is the founder and CEO of location-based startup Roamz, developer of social media business product Local Measure.
Foursquare has become entrenched in the fabric of the local web, providing an API that delivers common good for developers. Any destabilization in Foursquare or its developer tools would fundamentally affect the stability of the mobile web. → Read More
TechCrunch interviewed Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley a couple of weeks ago during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (referenced here). It was his third time visiting and speaking at the event, and perhaps Foursquare’s most engaged visit of all in terms of going there: Crowley says that, all told, he met with 33 different companies this time around. It’s a sign of how the company is looking for… → Read More
This year’s SXSWi did not herald the next Big Thing in tech, as some guessed it wouldn’t, but it wasn’t always this way. In 2010, a year when people were a bit more optimistic about the new new thing, Foursquare was the boss. First appearing in 2009, by 2010 it came into its own as the mayor of the location wars with its app based around checking into places and then sharing that information… → Read More
Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley discussed the company’s evolution from an app that was primarily focused around helping people to find their friends, to finding out more about the world that they live in. Crowley said that one of the underreported stories is the number of companies which rely on Foursquare’s map data and what developers can potentially do with that. → Read More
Depending who you ask, Foursquare could be in a great place as far as growth. Or in a bad place. We’ve heard about potential acquisitions, difficulty fundraising and everything in between. One thing we do know is that Foursquare needs your check ins to survive. After pushing consumer-facing features that allow you to dive deep into venue information, whether you check in or not, the metric… → Read More
Google has yet to release the Mirror API that will open Google Glass as a platform, but developers of some of the more popular mobile apps today are gearing up for when it will. Today, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Dennis Crowley, CEO of social location app Foursquare, highlighted Google’s new headgear as an example of how mobile screens are evolving. Later, he told TechCrunch that… → Read More
The proliferation of organized “hackathons” has been a big story over the past few years. Quite a few developers that I’m friends with see them as a way to keep themselves sharp on their own products and ideas, especially when a different company is the one putting the event on. I recently attended, and judged, a Foursquare hackathon in San Francisco, and saw about 20… → Read More
Foursquare — which this year passed its three-billionth check-in, added 15 million more users to its network, and in October kicked off a new chapter as a stronger competitor to Yelp with more local information and reviews — is now updating its privacy policy to keep up. It has been sending out an email to its users informing them that as of January 28, it will add in two new items that will… → Read More
Foursquare has announced that it will expand recommendations to include suggestions made by users’ Facebook friends who have also signed up for the location-based discovery service. The move means that if you have connected your Facebook and Foursquare accounts, your Facebook contacts’ public activity on Foursquare will influence the recommendations you see in Explore, even if you aren’t connected… → Read More
About a year ago, Evernote branched out from its core mission of being the place to record your life by launching apps tailored to specific purposes, focusing first on Food and contacts management (Hello). Today, the company is releasing a major update for Food on iOS that will take the app to the next level of usefulness: users will now be able to search recipe archives and look up and map… → Read More
Foursquare has long been working to move beyond location check-ins and into the realm of local discovery, helping its users find new places to check out, based on ratings, comments, and tips from its users. With Facebook now invading its turf, Foursquare just launched a new update to its iPhone app which is devoted to adding even more discovery features. → Read More
Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue sent an interesting 31st tweet today. It’s a Foursquare check-in at Apple’s HQ, indicating that Cue is trying out the service at work. Moreover, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley is spending a week in San Francisco. These two circumstantial bits of information incite speculation: could they be talking about an acquisition, or a deep software… → Read More
There are reasons why we go where we go, eat where we eat, and drink where we drink. Maybe it’s the ambience, maybe it’s that cute waitress or waiter, or maybe it’s karaoke night. Today, Foursquare has announced that businesses can now add events to their venues. This is a pretty huge step towards helping you find new places to go and tell your friends about why you go there…without doing any… → Read More
In a piece entitled “Farewell Foursquare“, its first designer, Mari Sheibley, has let everyone know that she has decided to leave the company.
She went on to explain how she first heard from its founder and CEO, Dennis Crowley:
In early December, 2008 I got an email from Dennis Crowley asking if I wanted to help him and his buddy Naveen out on a new “project”.
I said yes. → Read More
Today at Business Insider’s Ignition conference in New York, David Lee, founder and managing partner at SV Angel commented on Foursquare. As SV Angel is an investor, he had good things to say. “Foursquare is one of the most misunderstood companies,” he said. At 43, Lee isn’t using Foursquare to check in. He uses it in a passive way to find new restaurants, and finds the app very powerful. It goes… → Read More
Two of the team of eight designers at Foursquare have recently left to focus on Sunrise, a calendar product to do more with your calendar, with data from Google Calendar, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. They currently offer a daily email and are actively working on the next version. According to them, the calendar can be a very powerful tool and nobody has figured it out yet. → Read More
Promoting new businesses on social services is all the rage these days. Ask Twitter. Today, Foursquare is getting into the act by adding a new section called “Recently Opened” to its iOS app (no word yet on Android updates). The hope is that you will try out some new venues within Foursquare and potentially like them…and continue going there. → Read More
With the recent Foursquare changes, it’s becoming very clear that the service is trying to spread its wings into the mainstream population. It’s about discovery and exploration now, not just check-ins.
Today, Foursquare wanted to let everyone know that you can check-in with a friend, even if they’re not using Foursquare. This is important because the service has been around for a while and… → Read More
When Foursquare introduced the new web version of its “Explore” functionality for those who visit its homepage, we knew that something was up. This was absolutely the “new” Foursquare built on top of all the data that we’ve provided the service for years and years. You see, check-ins, tips and social connections tell many stories. → Read More
Foursquare has been taking VC meetings recently, looking into raising a Series D round of funding of between $50 million and $100 million according to multiple sources. In previous rounds, the company has brought in over $71.4 million in financing from Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and others.
From what we’re hearing the company seeks to flesh out this round at a… → Read More
Remember when Path was super quiet with your nice group of fifty people? That’s all going to change now. As I broke at TNW, Path has been tinkering with the notion of importing items from other social networks. The feature has now been released in the latest update to the app.
You can now import Facebook status updates, Instagram photos and Foursquare check-ins right to your Path stream. Is… → Read More
As I’ve said before, I’m an avid user of foursquare, and it has become the de facto service for me when it comes to finding new places to grab dinner or just chill out with a drink. I’ve been using the service since it launched in 2009, and I’ve found it to be a fun way to chronicle the vast world that I live in. One day, I will be able to show my kids the history of check-ins and information that… → Read More
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