Foursquare Sneak Previews New “Personalized Local Search” & Moves All Check-Ins To Swarm

If you’ve been one of the few fearless folks holding out from updating their Foursquare app, your days are numbered. In a blog post and an email sent out to early adopters , Foursquare alerted its constituency that as of tomorrow all check-ins will be required to occur on Swarm, the new hub for check-ins. Furthermore, Foursquare has released a new logo and previewed a dramatic new look.

With the delineation between check-ins and local search comes the new logo that’s half pin/half F (or superhero emblem if you listen to Foursquare). Not the big news for Foursquare is that without check-ins, it can focus on search. In the email Foursquare prides itself on creating a custom experience for each user and that “no two people will have the same experience with the app.”

The new app will allow users to add some information such as tastes, the ability to follow experts and the app will be transformed to your personality and desires. From the screenshot we can see a variety of options including a scroll bar that includes various types of foods, tastes that have been associated with a user and of course a large search bar front and center.

According to Foursquare, this is just the beginning of the true “personalized local search” future that they’ve been lamenting about since the inception of Foursquare. The official email even goes so far to state “… if you’ve been waiting for real local search, not just the yellow pages on your phone, stay tuned”.

This appears to be Foursquare pushing all their chips in on local search, and from the one screenshot we have, it looks pretty fantastic. For more information, see the official blog post.

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides digital marketing and web development. He is a co-host of Marketing O'Clock and has been in the digital marketing industry for nearly 20 years. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.