With all this criticism against checking in, if Foursquare was still the app it used to be with Check-in built in, I'd still be using it.
The best part about Foursquare for me was a personal diary of things I did, the ability to share and gamify that diary, and only as a headfake, get location info. Swarm, not so much. They should have just made two apps -- one, the present day Foursquare, and another for Foursquare check-ins. They didn't have to create another brand. See how FB split itself into multiple apps.
Also, they killed the diary, the mayorships, the accomplishments. It's very hard to trust them with even an icon space on my phone anymore. Foursquare wanted a bigger toy, it threw what it had under the bus, and it wound up with neither.
In my opinion, the gamification was getting kind of old, especially as a lot of people had third-party apps that would check them into any location they even passed by. This probably made it very difficult to monetize location data, but it also made Foursquare less reliable for me when I want to know if my friends have actually been to a place.
I quite like the new Foursquare app, and never use other services like Yelp or Urban Spoon anymore. I see new places pop up on Foursquare before they're on Google Maps all of the time.
On the other hand, Swarm is a dull replacement of the gaming side of things. I find the design too "bubbly" almost childish. I do like that it is very easy for me to rate a place I've been, but I'm not very clear on how those ratings work with the ratings in the Foursquare app (which are much more in-depth).
Yeah, I noticed recently that I was automatically checked in to a bunch of places I haven't actually been, and I can't seem to find any setting to turn it off except for "disable background location data" which seems like it might be what triggers it. We will see if it actually stops, though.
>they killed the diary, the mayorships, the accomplishments.
It is there again, Swarm mayorships, coins, and accomplishements are fun. and I love when I check in to a new place and it shows a pop-up if one of my friends left a comment, since I know my friend tastes, I get more from it than a random Yelp review.
They brought all that stuff back. They've even added a new coins feature that lets you buy upgrades for your checkins. (Buy with coins you earn from checkins, not real money.)
I've found that the moves app + gyroscope actually fulfills this "diary of my day" pretty well.
I think (not sure) that moves uses fb checkin, but I never understood why Foursquare tried to pivot so hard when it was obvious that checkins were the main USP of the whole service.
The best part about Foursquare for me was a personal diary of things I did, the ability to share and gamify that diary, and only as a headfake, get location info. Swarm, not so much. They should have just made two apps -- one, the present day Foursquare, and another for Foursquare check-ins. They didn't have to create another brand. See how FB split itself into multiple apps.
Also, they killed the diary, the mayorships, the accomplishments. It's very hard to trust them with even an icon space on my phone anymore. Foursquare wanted a bigger toy, it threw what it had under the bus, and it wound up with neither.