When you open the new Foursquare, the first thing you’ll notice is that all signs of check-ins are gone. There’s no social feed, no map of friends’ faces, and no big blue button begging you to check in. Instead you’ll find suggestions for places to go grouped into various "intents" like coffee, brunch, dinner, shopping, fun, dessert, and nightlife. Foursquare automatically picks an intent based on the time of day, but you can also choose one on your own. Below each intent, like "brunch," you’ll find recommendations for where to go.
But unlike most apps (and the Foursquare of old), the new Foursquare doesn’t just show a simple list of good places tagged with "brunch." It guesses at what you might be in the mood for, like a brunch place that takes reservations, or a brunch place with bottomless mimosas. These guesses form categories like "boozy brunch," "romantic dinner," and "fancy coffees with Wi-Fi." Foursquare is cleverly taking cues from Netflix, which offers sub-genres like "cerebral thrillers" to help users find content.
Foursquare still offers more generic ranked lists like "great dinner places nearby," "places you’ve saved," and "places recommended by people you follow." But by breaking down intents even further into specific scenarios, moods, feelings, and cravings (like "chocolate fix" within the "dessert" intent), I’ve found that the new Foursquare, like Netflix, takes a lot of the work out of finding the right thing for the right moment. These categories acknowledge that pretty often when you search for "dinner," you’re actually searching for a romantic date spot.
The new Foursquare also factors in your favorite foods, drinks, and vibesFoursquare’s generally excellent recommendations are informed by a variety of factors, like where you’ve been before (if you check in), how you’ve rated places around town, places your friends have been, places the users you follow (like Esquire) have liked, and where lots of positive tips have been left. In version 8.0, however, Foursquare also factors in your favorite foods, drinks, vibes, and more. These "tastes," which you can add by tapping the pink F in the top corner of the app, will range from "arcade machines" to "bimbimbap" to "corner booths" and "cortados," and are meant to represent the entire range of stuff you love. There are 10,000 tastes, all sourced from Foursquare’s collection of 55 million tips.
Once you’ve picked out a few tastes, Foursquare begins weighting its recommendations towards places where people have left positive tips about the things you like. Pink taste keywords pop up below the names of places in search results, inside tips at places you’re looking at, and even on your user profile. The big idea, according to Crowley, is that no two users’ apps will ever look the same. "If five people are standing in the same place, they shouldn’t get the same results," he says. While he was walking around San Francisco the other day, Crowley says that the app pushed him a notification that a bar nearby had an old Street Fighter machine.
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