Foursquare Teases Its Redesigned Recommendation App, New Logo

After making the interesting decision to split its business and user experience in half, foursquare has today shown off the new version of foursquare proper for the first time.

The new foursquare ditches the old logo and the old color scheme and the old way of using foursquare. This new app is centered around personalization and recommendations. That said, you won’t find much green in the app anymore, but will instead see everything that’s tailored specifically to you in a watermelon pink color.

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The logo has also been updated to show a bit more sophistication, replacing a bouncy-ball check-mark-type thing with a foursquare F, flag-type thing. In an interview with the Verge, foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley suggested that the F-flag is a mark of foursquare’s new recommendation superpowers.

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The app will also provide “Most Popular” suggestions when you’re looking for something to do, based on the troves of data foursquare has around check-ins.

However, the new foursquare has little to do with check-ins. That’s being left for the other half of the business, Swarm.

Swarm launched back in May with a focus on ambient location. Users have the option to check-in specifically at a location, or turn on a neighborhood locator that showed their general vicinity to friends who are nearby. Plus, users could post plans for friends to chime in on.

Reviews of Swarm in the App Store have thus far been mostly negative.

With the two apps, one is more tailored to social planning and ambient location, for those of us who love to keep meticulous lists of every place we’ve ever been, and the other is to help you find out where you’re going next.

It’s a fresh start for foursquare, as the company shifts away from a gamified experience and starts using years of data to compete with Yelp and Google. However, the company will have to work on helping users understand the differences between the apps so that the experience is as seamless as possible. Which could be a problem.

If not communicated properly, there will be a few foursquare users who wake up one morning with the check-in absolutely gone from the app. foursquare is trying to migrate their users on to Swarm before that happens, but even then, there will be obstacles. For example, Swarm and foursquare will have two separate friends lists.

According to the Verge, we’ll get our first real feel for the app in a few weeks.

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