Foursquare Launches Major App Redesign - moodywasso1962

Foursquare happening Thursday launched a major redesign of its app for the iPhone and Android devices, incorporating features from societal uncovering and local hunt applications, as cured as the "look-alike" feature made famous by Facebook.

Straightforwardly, which launched in 2009 and has 20 million users, lets users "sign in" to shops and other locations to share their whereabouts with elite group contacts.

Foursquare described the redesign arsenic "a unimpaired new app." The app's "explore" function will now let users to browse locations by category OR conduct a specific search like "discharged Badger State-fi" or "dumplings," a company blog post announcing the launch said.

The keep company touts the "search" procedure as a break local search than Google Oregon Yelp. While users of those apps all stupefy more or less the same results, Foursquare users get "a rattling personalized set of search results," supported on prior check-INS, friends' check-INS and a given location's popularity crossways Foursquare, Holger Luedorf, Foursquare's V.P. of business development, aforementioned at a league in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Reinforcing the maneuver, the blog post Thursday noted, "It's non the one-sizing-fits-all border on to local discovery you'Ra accustomed."

Thursday's redesign debuted a Top Picks feature, or a set of recommendations that come out without requiring a query, a representative said. The existing lineament that allows users to find friends who may be nearby has also been relocated to the "research" tab.

The redesign introduced a "friends" tab featuring "tips, lists, and places your friends have saved," the company said. Foursquare besides claims to have made the app faster.

A Blackberry bush edition of the app will add up before long, the company aforesaid. Square does not build apps for Windows Phone "in-house," a representative aforementioned in an email, but according to Luedorf, the company is working with Microsoft to create an app for the Windows Telephone set.

The blog base announcing the changes promised more than updates in the "weeks ahead."

Cameron Scott covers hunt, web services and privacy for The IDG News Religious service. Follow Cameron connected Chirrup at CScott_IDG.