Foursquare is one of the biggest names in tech. But at the ripe old age of six, the company has made significant changes to the way that it does business with the split of Foursquare and Swarm into two separate apps.
In the midst of such a dramatic shift, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to invite Dennis Crowley, Foursquare cofounder and CEO, to the Disrupt NY stage in May.
Crowley founded Foursquare alongside Naveen Selvadurai back in 2009, and the location-based social network now has listings for more than 65 million places, 7 billion check-ins, and 50 million actives across the platform.
But in the last year, Foursquare has transformed from an all-in-one social network and recommendations app to two separate programs, one for recommendations and the other for social location-sharing.
Swarm, but a year old, has taken some flack in the past year, mostly from folks who had grown attached to the Foursquare check-in. But Swarm, the new social app that shares location with friends, is in the midst of a big transition as it figures out how to provide the most value to users. That started with the introduction of direct messaging last month and will likely continue now that the redesigned Foursquare is off and running.
The new Foursquare, as I like to call it, is an entirely redesigned experience meant to combat Yelp’s domination in the world of recommendations. After years of aggregating locations and reviews for those places from actual users, Foursquare has its own searchable database that can be customized based on tastes and a user’s social graph or used quickly without signing in to an account.
The new Foursquare is poised to take on Yelp’s old-school domination of the space with a cleaner interface and better (any) personalization, but whether or not it will be able to complete the task is up for debate.
More on the Disrupt NY stage with Crowley. See you there.
Dennis Crowley will join other notable Disrupt NY speakers, including Tinder’s Sean Rad, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, and Vine’s Jason Mante.
The show runs May 4-6 at the historic Manhattan Center. Tickets are available at an early-bird discount rate until April 11.
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