Foursquare Updates App To Offer More Tips, Deals, Competition

Foursquare Updates App To Offer More Tips, Deals, Competition

Foursquare is updating its app to offer several new features designed to offer more recommendations, more game mechanics, and more specials.

"With Foursquare 3.0, something we've been spending a lot of time focusing on taking the service beyond the check-in and starting to build a rich ecosystem around it fueled by discovery, encouragement, and loyalty," Foursquare's head of product Alex Rainert told The Huffington Post.

Foursquare will be adding a new "Explore" section that enables users to search for recommendations that are based on check-ins and tips both from their friends and from the Foursquare community as a whole.

The algorithm that determines what results you receive for a query for "coffee," for example, would take into account your check-in history (and your friends'), your tips (and your friends'), things on your to-do list, and more. Users also have the ability to tweak the results they see, such as by limiting the results to their friends' recommendations or to a specific location.

Foursquare 3.0 has also brought back the leaderboard, making it possible to see how many points you have accumulated versus how many your friends have earned.

"The leaderboard was part of the first iteration of Foursquare," Rainert explained. "Leveraging game mechanics to encourage behaviors in the real world is something that has always been near and dear to us and at the core of the Foursquare experience."

The third and final change: new kinds of deals. Foursquare noted in a press release that it was debuting several new types of "specials," which will include offers for "swarms, groups of friends, regulars, newbies, mayors or everyone - to allow businesses to reward their loyal customers and entice new ones."

Check out the new app below:

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