New Foursquare – The Reviews Are Mixed

The Tastes feature of the new Foursquare 

The new Foursquare arrived this week – splitting off the Swarm social check-in app for good and offering Foursquare users a much more robust recommendation app for anything its users are likely to want to do. 

The new logo

Foursquare now has a pink logo and a pink-and-blue color palette (perfect for a newborn) and will offer recommendations based on Foursquare's database of 10,000 tastes, which cover qualities like food served, ambience, and activity type that Foursquare has gleaned from all the user tips that it has stockpiled over the years.

So what are people saying about this new Foursquare? Not all the first impressions are glowing. A round up:

In "This Is The New Foursquare" on TechCrunch Jordan Crook (@jordanrcrook) says: "Everyone, please meet the new Foursquare, a recommendations app that has nothing to do with location sharing and everything to do with smacking down Yelp using the force of a thousand suns.

"The author is impressed by the new version saying: "… using the new Foursquare instead of Yelp for the past few days has felt like upgrading from a BlackBerry Bold to an iPhone 5s."

In a piece called "The New Foursquare Is Here, and It's Surprisingly Good" author Pete Pachal (@petepachal), Tech Editor at Mashable, says "The check-in is dead." He asks rhetorically where that leaves Foursquare before answering his own question:

"As one of the best city guides you can get on a smartphone, actually, with a fully revamped user experience that puts some of the 5-year-old company's best information front and center.

"Foursquare 8.0 is a big step forward for the app, but it's far from perfect, and longtime users may not have the patience to discover its charms," Pachal says.

On Wired the spin is "Radical New Foursquare App Thinks You Want Even Less Privacy." Senior Writer Ryan Tate (@ryantate) says the new version is "… keeping tabs on you at all times, sending your location back to Foursquare’s servers, which then push recommendations back to your smartphone, suggesting restaurants and stores to visit—and stuff to order and buy once you get there."

He quotes Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley: "To actually get an app to talk to you like a friend would talk to you. That’s what we’re going at here, and I think we’ve done a really good job of it."

But Tate thinks users' privacy concerns may be a big problem for the new Foursquare: "The data you share with Foursquare today could conceivably end up in the hands of the NSA, hackers, or private data brokers tomorrow."

"Foursquare kills off the 'social media' pretense of data collection" trumpeted Ars Technica over a story by Casey Johnston (@caseyjohnston). The report notes: "Perhaps the most surprising thing about the app is how little you can interact with it for something that is (or will become) so personalized." 

"The tip-leaving interface is essentially a one-directional version of Twitter, and there are no options to toggle location-based services," Johnston notes.

"Fortunately, Foursquare doesn't publicly share any of a user's location information unless it's in aggregate. Users can follow each other, but the only content they see is each other's tips," she says.

"This is the cleverest portion of the service's revamp: make customers feel like they are sharing nothing, when in reality they are sharing everything."

And what did Foursquare itself have to say about the launch? It seemed very pleased. In a blog post Thursday it noted that "... tastes are already one of the most popular features. In the last 18 hours, you have already added 15 million tastes to profiles globally."

The post concludes with: "With the all-new Foursquare, you don’t have to know what you want. Just say, 'where should I go to lunch?' The app knows what you like. Let it lead you to places you’ll love."

So what do you think of the new Foursquare? Will it replace Yelp? And will you use Swarm for check-ins?

Related post:
9 Ways to Maintain (Some) Privacy on Social Media, the Web

Dear Foursquare – 3 features I’d love you to add

Foursquare started as one of those things I wasn’t sure I wanted (or needed). Now it is a fun part of my daily social media routine and something I do miss when I don’t have access to it (it’s a long story, but it involves American phone companies and their ridiculous international data usage rates).

But as someone who does a lot of thinking about social media and social media strategy I’ve been wondering how Foursquare could go from great to brilliant.

Dennis Crowley and his crew at Foursquare are doing great things, but I figured why not make a few suggestions for things I’d love to see on Foursquare. Hey you never know …

Dear Foursquare – 3 features I’d love you to add:

Meetup Planning: I’d love to be able to select a group of friends I have on Foursquare (and other social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, but let’s not get greedy) and suggest a future meetup at a location on Foursquare. Ideally Foursquare would track "yes," "no" and "maybe" responses and send me a reminder or two at times I pick.

A Better Recommendation Engine: Based on my checkins at every coffee shop I can find, for example, I would love to be able to toggle on or off alerts about coffee shops I have not yet tried. Maybe I can pick up to three categories of places I always want to be alerted about and a certain distance away from wherever I am. For example: "Hey Mike, Foursquare noticed you are within 2 miles of a restaurant that serves Mexican. Do you want to check it out?" Being able to save this heads up for a future visit would also be great.

The "Why-Didn’t-I-Think-of-That? " Wheel of Discovery: So I’m in a new city (or just in my own city and looking for a new experience) why not have a "spin the wheel" option where Foursquare randomly selects five things it knows are nearby (distance to be determined by me or Foursquare). This would be a good addition. To make it great, maybe each user's "wheel" learns over time as people accept or reject specific recommendations.

So what do you say Dennis and crew? Can these features be added? I know it would sure increase my use of Foursquare.

What do you think? What other features would you like added to Foursquare?

2011: The Year of Klout

Got Klout? In social media 2011 is turning out to be the Year of Klout.

The service that began in September, 2009 has rocketed to the front of the pack of tools that attempt to measure overall influence across social platforms.

So what is Klout? It takes social network data and measures the likelihood that each user’s connections will act upon anything that user shares on their networks and then calculates the influence of those connections and their ability to cause actions. In other words it tracks online influence and gives each user a ranking on a scale of 1 to 100.

Initially Klout measured its users’ Twitter and Facebook influence, but 2011 has seen some big changes:

Early 2011: Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome offer add-ons: This allows users of these two browsers to instantly see the Klout score of all the people in their Twitter stream.

May, 2011: Launched a new section on the Klout website highlighting Klout Perks. According to the company’s blog: "Klout Perks are exclusive offers or experiences, given as a result of your Klout. Perks allow brands to connect with influencers in their area of expertise."

Jun 1: Introduced +K: This is a way, as Klout explains on its blog, to augment the data captured by Klout. The tool lets Klout users vouch for their peers’ influence in topics Klout has associated with each user.

June 14: Added Linkedin data to the influence score because with 100 million users of the professional network Klout said it believed adding Linkedin would make for a more accurate overall score.

July 12: Announced its data is in high demand: Klout says that it served more than two billion API calls in the month of June – or four times the demand of three months prior. This means large numbers of services are now seeing value in pulling Klout data.

July 14: Announces that Foursquare is now integrated into Klout scoring. According to a Mashable interview with Klout CEO Joe Fernandez adding Foursquare "is the start of an aggressive process from Klout to add more data sources and granularity to the Klout scores."

And possibly in the near future?

Google+ integration: According to a July 20 post on Klout’s official blog the company has "already started work on ways to assess your influence on Google+"

More on Klout:
• For an example of how Klout stirs passionate debate over the whole topic of measuring social media influence check out Mark Schaefer’s The making of a social media slut blog post (especially the comments area).

• For insight into where Klout has come from and where it is headed read the Forbes interview of Klout CEO Fernandez by Tracy John: Klout CEO On Raising Your Score, Google Plus Integration And Justin Bieber’s Perfect 100

So if you haven’t yet had your fill of Klout keep watching this space because in social media 2011 is most assuredly the Year of Klout.

What is Scoville? Will it Heat up Social Media?

It’s not often I get 11 invites in one day to a new social network. Such was the case this week when among all the other mail for my social media strategy business were 11 invitations to join Scoville.

On clicking through from the invitation visitors to the site are greeted by a gigantic image of a cow’s nose and the message “Remember the best places are just under your nose ….” The About page goes on to say:

Welcome to Scoville #beta,

Our mission is to help our users discover at least one great new place every week. We'll make it extremely simple for you to share the places you really love, the places you believe the community should know about.

We're now opening our private beta to Foursquare users, so if you're passionate about your city and want to share awesomeness around you, join the beta now!

So Scoville is tied to Foursquare, but I wanted to know more. Here’s what I learned:

The site is named after the Scoville Scale – the international scale for measuring the heat of hot peppers. Once signed up your profile is also rated in Scoville units. After an easy sign up through Foursquare I was rated a “Jalepeno (their spelling, not mine): 129 Scoville units.”

#TopTuesday is the main way Scoville hopes to engage its members and attract new ones. How it works: Each week members pick a favorite place to be their #toptuesday pick and the each Tuesday Scoville (presuming you’ve granted Twitter access) sends out a tweet about your #toptuesday pick for and invites others to join Scoville. Any tips you’ve left at the venue are included so your friends can see what you recommend. This means that while you are helping your followers find places you like you’re also driving a Trending Topic (#toptuesday) on Twitter (which won’t hurt Scoville).

Promoting Scoville has been well thought out. For example: Promotional tweets Scoville creates for you when you sign up include:
• The Plain: “Help me unlock New York, Join me on Scoville.”
• The intriguing: “I like it Hot, real Hot! I'm ready to blow the Scoville scale!”
• The fun: “Had some dodgy Indian food, now stuck in the bathroom. Next time I go Scoville”

Unlocking your city is not automatic. In Scoville-language users cannot complete their profile or “Unlock your location” until there are 1,000 users at that location. Reaching that many users will be tough on smaller locations or even bigger ones if users are tagged with the town they live in rather than the larger city they feel affinity to. Smart users will go to the Settings page and change their location to the nearest big city.

At SXSW in March Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley said Foursquare was opening its API to anyone who wanted to build layers on top of Foursquare. Is Scoville going to become one of the first big apps to add an extra layer of value on top of Foursquare?

Perhaps more interestingly, will Scoville mean new opportunities in social media strategy for businesses? What do you think?

Possibly related post:
5 Foursquare Apps You May Not Know

5 Foursquare apps you may not know

Foursquare is one of social media’s fastest growing tools. Here are five web-based apps to help you get more out of your time on Foursquare:

checkinmania.com This is an app that tracks who is checking in at various locations around you using Foursquare. And although it also offers data on check-ins on Gowalla, Brightkite and Twitter, its data is most comprehensive for Foursquare. It uses Google Maps-like functionality to show where you are in relation to various locations. In Venue mode it lists those nearby locations already identified on Foursquare. In Tips mode you can read what others have said about a particular location.

foursquarebrands.com This site allows users to manage the brands they're following and not following. And, as of this writing, there were 343 brands on Foursquare – many of them offering rewards for being followed.

ubermayor.com If you are anxious to become the mayor of more Foursquare venues or looking to get a SuperMayor badge this is the web app to use. It makes it easy to find out how many more check-ins it will take to become the mayor of a venue and is also a good tool for visualizing your Foursquare history.

fourcourt.com This app has the slogan “See who’s playing” and answers the question: If you’re in front of a computer and want to know where your friends are before heading out what can you do? Sign into Fourcourt with Foursquare sign in and see where everybody you know is (or has been recently).

4squareoffers.com A site that says it has more than 20,000 offers from around 79 countries. It allows search by name of a business, tags, category and location (within 25 miles). Note: Outside major metropolitan areas there may be a limited number of offers.

Know of other useful Foursquare web-based apps? Please help others in social media get more from Foursquare by adding them in the comments area below.