I used the old Foursquare for fun. Then I started using it for business. I enjoyed it. I saw new places my “friends” checked in to, used it for Memory Lane, I was rewarded with discounts and even occasionally, became a “Mayor”! My favorite were the badges! Check in to several different bakeries and get bakery badges, check in to a lot of coffee shops and get coffee badges, and check in to a bunch of airports and get traveler badges!! My favorite was the surprise badge! I got one while shopping in New York City. It was a Fashion Week badge!! It was silly but fun and exciting. The competitive types, you could rack up points for the check ins for checking in a lot throughout the day. New places earned more points.
For some reason, the makers of Foursquare decided that they needed to change things drastically so you no longer can check in with the Foursquare app. You must now download another other app, called Swarm (the name by the way does not go ever well with me because I am not a fan of bees).
The once popular app is now getting uninstalled by many former fans and are not moving on to Swarm. I am NOT going to Swarm, because I’m really not interested in downloading yet another app and setting up yet another account when I already had an account with a program that I liked, used and was fun!
I think that if they had done the updates and kept the check in part of the app with Foursquare, people’s reactions would be different. Most people aren’t a fan of change, but this goes beyond change to what many may consider destruction. Did the developers of Swarm and Foursquare shoot themselves in the foot? We’ll see!!
Jim says:
I saw where @killswarmapp retweeted the link to this post on Twitter the other day, even though the post is 4 months old. Yes, screw Foursquare and Swarm, stopped using both, deleted them from my phone, and my last check in was July 9th 2014, after having about 5,000 check ins total. They had already phased out Mayorships and points, and I knew it was coming, and didn’t even wait for the official split. Here’s an interesting tidbit for you though, they got the name Swarm because there used to be a Swarm badge on the old foursquare. If you checked into a place, and there were more than 50 people checked in, you got the badge. I looked mine up, and I got it at a St. Patrick’s day parade in 2012. They also had a super swarm badge, where it had to be 250 people, but I never got that one.
Katey says:
I had the Swarm and Super Swarm badge too. It was fun before it split into two different apps. I was not interested in downloading yet another app and losing my badges made me sad.