Foursquare Divided: Swarm Looks To Add Value To Foursquare's Operations

In 2009, Foursquare got its start with a novel idea: people's friends, family and casual acquaintances might want to know where that person is at a certain point, and as such, a way for those people to tell all those other people made a note of sense. Sure enough, the idea caught on, and users began to show up to “check in” and let all those other people know just where said users were appearing live, so to speak. But as mobile changed, so too did Foursquare need to make changes, and thus Swarm was born.

Swarm is based around the idea that, while it was important at one point to announce a user's location to the world at large since there was precious little in the way of other means to do so, it's much simpler to do so with other apps and functions now. It represents essentially half of the new Foursquare, and provides a measure of what's called “social heat,” which allows users to spot the current whereabouts of selected friends, and check-in to share location. Meanwhile, in about a month according to reports, a new version of Foursquare will be released that drops check-in, and puts its focus on local search results, which some have projected will make it a challenger for Yelp in the truest sense.

The process of rebuilding Foursquare started back in November 2013, when CEO Dennis Crowley turned to the upper echelon of Foursquare with one purpose in mind: break Foursquare down into its primary components, and retool the app from there. Essentially, the change was driven by a change in the mobile landscape, as described by Foursquare's vice president of product experience Jon Steinback. Steinback elaborated that mobile, back when Foursquare got started, the focus was on a complete experience with several components under one brand name. But mobile began to change, with apps becoming ultra-specialized tools that did one thing and did it well. This is where Foursquare started to see the need to change, and started in on Swarm and Foursquare in coalition. As a result, the two sides started to offer a more efficient, focused experience, and Foursquare discovered that, essentially, the two separate apps actually worked better apart.

At the root of it all, meanwhile, is value. Value not only for the users—who get a better experience that focuses on the direction the user may want—but also for investors who are looking for the company to keep growing and keep those who are already in the fold in place. If Foursquare continues to do what it's always done, its growth rate will likely slow as those who aren't interested stay out of the whole thing. But if Foursquare can add new benefit—as is evidenced by Swarm's particular focus on discovery and local search—then the user number counts can continue to climb as those who found no value in check-ins find value in discovery. Discovery is usually valuable; who doesn't want to find where that new restaurant is, or that bar everyone loves, or even that little hole-in-the-wall bookstore or similar hobby shop that may have just what someone was looking for?

Not many people don't want that—and that includes a lot of people who weren't using Foursquare. Foursquare's value to a potential user base, and to its investors, is likely to see a big gain as a result of all this, and that's good news for all concerned.