Foursquare is shutting down its native app, now called City Guides, on December 15. The associated website will be up for a few more weeks. All data entered by companies and users and the interfaces (APIs) set up to query and change them are also retained. Because Foursquare makes money by licensing the data it collects about shops and other establishments and their visitors.
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The company also continues to operate an app called Swarm, which it spun off from Foursquare ten years ago. Swarm is used to track the leisure activities of social acquaintances. “With Swarm, you can see which of your friends are hanging out nearby, find out who’s available to hang out with later, and find out who’s available to grab a drink with,” the company’s blog said when it launched in 2014. , and you can share what you’re doing.”
A decade of double track
At the time, Swarm was an expression of Foursquare’s new two-app strategy. The original app was also called Foursquare and has since been renamed City Guide. For the past ten years, the app and website have focused on location-based marketing of money-spending opportunities, while Swarm’s check-ins, which facilitate meeting acquaintances, have survived. Now these works are coming together again, at least partially.
City Guide is clearly not a gold mine, and it costs extra to run the two systems, even if they share data in the background. Officially, the return of the one-app strategy is to enable “an even better experience” with Swarm. Starting in the new year, this will be reflected in new service features that aim to bring “greater impact and better services to our customers.” The company saysAfter this, some of the city guide functions will remain in Swarm.
Company founder Dennis Crowley is no longer actively involved in management, but remains co-chairman of the board of directors. Online he tries to dispel fears about financial difficulties: the turnover of the company Foursquare exceeds 100 million dollars. He also expresses his gratitude to the developers, infrastructure managers and customer service staff of the finished app, as well as to the super users who were especially eager to enter data for God’s reward. After all, these data donations are essential to Foursquare’s revenue.
Talking about data, users can download their data even after City Guide is closed. Information must be retained for a long time, after all it also feeds the herd, where it will remain available. If you wish, you can delete your data and it will definitely disappear from the swarm.
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