Until not long ago, when one talked about Twitter or Facebook as successful companies and potential, inevitably had a third that always strained in this list: Foursquare. Just submitted, the application based on the location of users, quickly made to grow its user base.
At its inception, Foursquare was a mobile app that allowed you shares through your phone, your location with friends and strangers; this is called Check-In. How many more Check-In’s doing – in the same place or different, the application will “rewarded” with a Badge (technically a patch, as used by the Boy Scouts). If you grew into the person who was logged more times in the same place, you grew into the Governor.
The reason for its success was hard to explain, especially to those who never used it. However, analysts explained that the playful aspect that exploited this application. Users who do not know each other they fought to become governors of a pizzeria or see who could more badges in a month. It was a healthy competition that extended to real life, and this was interesting.
This software also allow you to know where your friends were and what places recommended by area and you could do the same with others.
With the passage of time, this playful streak became practically the only utility of the application, relegating the side of the recommendations. And as expected, this game was losing its appeal, while the applications based on recommendations, such as Yelp or Gowalla, began to have its peak.
Now, five years after its launch, Foursquare decided it was time to change course. On the one hand, a few weeks ago presented Swarm that will handle all Check-In’s and all the fun part which had the old application. Moreover, the company relaunched the Foursquare application will only work as a platform to search for places to eat, drink or visit and share comments and suggestions from users.
Why make this distinction? As explained Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare, the lighter side of the application had gained too much prominence, while recommendations between users and finding places had been badly neglected. With this new change, says the executive, Foursquare looking to refocus on finding and recommendations of places, something that was always at the heart of the platform.
This change in strategy brought about a visual redesign of Foursquare. The company changed the site colors and logo, which remained almost the same for five years. The new logo, one F with form of scoreboard inside a map, emphasizes this new orientation of the application.