July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

As with a child’s first years, every little Windows Phone development demands its own bit of fanfare.

The latest update comes from Foursquare, which is updating its Windows 8 app. The app, which Foursquare says is optimized for Nokia’s Lumia phones, adds features like lock screen notifications, voice search, and the ability to pin certain people or venues to the home screen.

The biggest improvement, however, is the app’s new Metro-fied interface, which is a significant step up from the design of its predecessor. In fact, the new Foursquare app doesn’t feel like a Foursquare app at all — it feels a Windows Phone 8 app.

That, I assume, is exactly the point. While Windows Phone 8 offers a number of things that iOS and Android don’t, the most distinctive of these features is the operating system’s design language. As a result, it’s always a big deal when developers take the time to create native, optimized versions of their apps rather then poorly port design elements from elsewhere. (It’s also a major vote of confidence: Obviously, Foursquare sees the use in taking the time to do all of this extra work, even if it did get help from Microsoft and Nokia.)

And Foursquare isn’t alone. Another big Windows Phone 8 app addition came just yesterday, when Hulu finally released a native version of its app for Microsoft’s mobile OS. The Windows 8 YouTube app also saw a big update today.

Foursquare is on a design update streak as of late, having last month updated both its iOS app and web interface to focus on core features like Explore and user ratings.

If you’re a user of the location-based social network Foursquare, that is.

Apparently, I eat a lot, spend a lot of time outdoors in parks and recreation facilities, visit quite a few offices, and — more than anything else — shop. How depressing. Fortunately, there’s a little bit of travel thrown in there as well to add spice to an otherwise mundane life.

Foursquare has released a special badge for 4sqDay 2013 — see it to the right — and has special shwag for those holding Foursquare day parties, as well as suggestions for businesses that are holding 4sqDay promos.

I’m nowhere near that passionate, but it is interesting to see your year in review and see what you’ve done and where you’ve been. Getting that information does, of course, require that you check in at every location you visit, but Foursquare has made that a lot easier in its latest iOS app update.

Foursquare users have checked in well over three billion times, and left tens of millions of tips, all of which is helping Foursquare build a local search and recommendation engine which is helping it transition from the once-I’m-there app to the where-to-go-now app.

To get the 4sqDay 2013 badge, simply check in anywhere, today.

Image credit: John Koetsier

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Marcus Thielking is cofounder of Skobbler, a provider of mobile map-based solutions that use OpenStreetMap data.

Map lovers, 2012 was our year.

From Apple unveiling and then apologizing for Apple Maps, to the emergence of the collaborative and crowdsourced OpenStreetMap, for those fascinated by digital mapping technologies, 2012 was a critical point in time. And with location-based services powered by map data expected to reach 1.4 billion users by 2014, you can bet the innovation and competition we witnessed will continue in 2013.

So, what’s next? Here are the top five moments I expect we’ll see in the digital maps space in 2013:

1. OpenStreetMap gets better

With over one million contributors to date, a number that has doubled approximately every 14 months since 2005 and shows no signs of slowing, the OpenStreetMap — affectionately known as the “Wikipedia of maps”— is quickly becoming one of the most popular mapping platforms on the planet. And, the more users lend the project their location expertise, the better OpenStreetMap’s data will ultimately turn out to be. In fact, today, OpenStreetMap has already become the most detailed digital map available in countries like England and Germany. With its ever-increasing user base, the data can only continue to improve. This is hugely important for developers seeking to build their own location-based products and services.

Beyond just being cost effective, OpenStreetMap delivers levels of detail, accuracy (beyond just the street networks) and flexibility not possible with some of the more traditional map players. As the platform advances thanks to user growth, developers in need of mapping data will continue to abandon relationships with guys like Google Maps, TomTom and others, integrating OpenStreetMap data into their own offerings.

2. Apple Maps will get better, too

Apple Maps has been categorized by many as the company’s largest black eye (at least recently). Not only did the app suffer from a data issue, but it was clear the company didn’t have the right team in place building the product, as it couldn’t fully deliver on the fundamentals (like putting bridges in the right places). It was a colossal letdown that led to firings and public apologies, and I guess this should be the case, given this, this, or this. Here’s the thing, though, for all of the criticisms, Apple Maps will only get better.

Whether it will come internally (unlikely), or from the integration with an external mapping party of some sort (see Apple’s rumored acquisition of Waze, although, I think a company like TomTom makes more sense given their base technology and mapping talent), look for Apple to improve on its service. Google knows this and won’t stop updating its own map so as to take full advantage of its head start and ensure that its market position will remain solidified. Apple doubters remember, though – and there are quite a few doubters out there today – the company has long been a bastion of innovation in every arena, so expect the Maps product to slowly find its way back and be a very big player in 2013.

3. Google Maps will lose some of its luster

Apple Maps was the best thing ever to happen to Google Maps. Upon its release, people realized just how valuable Google’s service was through comparison. They also realized how important maps were more generally. For the end-user, the effort and skill required to produce a digital map was, for once, clear. The press for Google was unsurprisingly positive. It couldn’t have asked for a better situation.

However, a mere few months prior, the seemingly unflappable Google was the one on the receiving end, seeing negative press for Google Maps after deciding to charge high-volume users of its maps API. The moment positioned Google as the corporate entity that it is, rather than a driver of innovation. That’s when we started to see defections en masse from Google Maps to the OpenStreetMap, with Foursquare, Wikipedia, and even Apple, leading the charge. While Google has since reversed course, it’s an issue that will crop up again soon and perhaps shift the narrative – in a negative way – for Google.

4. Partnerships to differentiate

For end users interested in a great mapping experience, whether it’s for navigation, direction-finding, and the like, maps can begin to seem redundant. More competition means more mapping services, but it should also mean more originality, allowing one platform to differentiate itself from the next. Google Maps, for instance, has Street View as a feature and is rolling out 3D functionality to stand out from a flood of new challengers. However, in order to be truly unique in an increasingly cluttered space, there are more creative opportunities for map makers to take advantage of, namely through partnerships with other location-based services that are eager to benefit from the scale afforded through map services.

For instance, take Nooly, a startup that allows you to view the weather, in real-time, for any point of interest (it’s location-based via GPS and seems to use Google Maps, currently). Partnering with them and leveraging their API would provide a great end-user benefit and allow a map service to carve out a true point of differentiation relative to other players. I think we’ll see more partnerships like this throughout the year.

5. More maps to come

With mobile proliferation, maps are becoming more and more essential each day, therefore, it only makes sense that more services will pop up, and that more existing companies will want a piece of the pie (Apple entering the fray is really just the beginning). This was especially true in 2012 – think Amazon’s November announcement – and it will only continue in 2013. Could Facebook, for example, enter the mapping space? The recent debut of its Graph Search function could make that a possibility, given location’s centrality to any search platform (and, if Facebook ever does decide to move forward with its own smartphone, a map will be core to that service, as well).

Now, these are just a few possibilities I think we’ll see in the mapping space this year.

Did I miss anything? What do you think will be some of the key map moments in 2013?

photo credit: Carla216 via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Three billion check-ins and tens of millions of tips ought to add up to something. In Foursquare’s case, that means the “Best of” series, which highlights “the most awesome places in cities across the U.S.”

The location-based social network, which has downplayed the competitive aspect of its service in which users get “points” for checking into various locations, has been focusing on local exploration and discovery. This new part of its website, launched today, helps people explore other places as well.

That means, apparently, that Mi Cocina is the best Mexican restaurant in Dallas. And that the 3 Crow Bar is the best nightspot in Nashville, Tenn.

“We use signals like tips, likes, dislikes, popularity, local expertise, and nearly three billion check-ins from over 30 million people worldwide to determine how much people love a place,” Foursquare said in a blog post. “The Best of Foursquare pulls together lists of the places people love most in cities across the U.S., from cafés and pizzerias to museums and bookstores.”

The new service is great for checking out what might be a good place to visit when you travel. But it’s also yet another nail in the traditional Yellow Pages-style directory — and a direct shot across the bow of a Yelp, which has owned local business recommendations, especially in the entertainment space.

Frankly, it also makes even clearer the competition between Foursquare and the more hotels-and-flights focused TripAdvisor as well as even the new graph-search-enabled Facebook.

Now, if only Foursquare could figure out a truly viable business model to go with all its wonderful data.

The new app for business owners, which allows them to monitor Foursquare check-in activity, check out top customers, and monitor analytics data, and the recently added feature enabling businesses to promote events might help with this.

For the first time on mobile, Foursquare today gave BlackBerry owners the option to use its application to check out nearby recommended places without creating an account or logging in to the service.

The logged-out functionality, announced Thursday, allows BlackBerry users to tap into Explore, Foursquare’s treasure trove of place recommendations powered by the more than 3 billion check-ins and 30 million tips created by existing users. Foursquare Explore was recently made available to anyone on the web but is still locked behind log-in screens on mobile, save for BlackBerry.

“Inspired by the possibility of making Foursquare available to as many people as possible, our BlackBerry team built a logged-out mobile version of Explore during a recent hackday,” the company wrote in a blog post Thursday. “With today’s update, BlackBerry becomes the first place where you can download Foursquare and start searching for places immediately, before you’ve even signed up.”

A company spokesperson added that the mobile hack was inspired by “a huge jump in Explore usage” after the logged out web version went live.

The change seems like an obvious one, and frankly one we’re surprised we haven’t seen crop up in Foursquare’s iPhone and Android applications. Why? Because the New York-based startup has been trying to get people to think of its application as the best way to uncover hidden gems in familiar hoods or locate stellar venues afar, and even as a viable maps alternative.

But to date Foursquare has been largely perceived as a social network for people who love to brag about where they are and their mayorships. To change that perception, Foursquare needs to make its place recommendation engine accessible to everyone. Competitor Yelp, for instance, provides people with business reviews information on mobile whether or not they’re logged in.

The BlackBerry update also seems like a perfect way to let people peek inside Foursquare and (ideally) get them hooked on the larger, account-required experience.

Photo credit: mckaysavage/Flickr

How does the saying go? The best offense is a good defense.

Fresh off rejection, Foursquare is making a full court press on iOS with the release of an iPhone 5 and iOS 6-ready version of its check-in application that touts — go figure — a more personalized maps experience for better exploring cities everywhere.

In version 5.3, released today for iPhone, the three-year-old startup has made design and feature improvements to the Explore tab to help users more easily find places they might like.

The Explore tab, which already made venue recommendations, is meant to be simpler to navigate, faster, and more efficient. Particularly, the tab now includes new search categories for finding places that a member has saved to a list, locales a person has previously or never visited, or venues that friends have frequented.

The update, while not major by any means, does enhance an important piece of the Foursquare experience that differentiates the offering from the likes of competitors like Yelp. Unfortunately for Foursquare, Yelp was chosen as the primary places engine for the Apple Maps experience. While likely not an intentional snub, Apple’s decision to rely on Yelp to serve users with business information, tips, photos, and check-ins is a snub all the same, and one that gives the newly public company exposure to millions of new people.

But Apple is the midst of a Maps nightmare, so the door is open for Foursquare to find favor with Maps haters looking for better ways to find nearby places.

Notice the careful wording included in the company’s blog post, emphasis ours.

Like any good map, if you type a specific place into Explore, we know where it is and can find it for you. But because we also know what you and your friends like, what’s popular in the neighborhood, and have data from tens of millions of tips and over 2.5 billion check-ins, we can also give you tailored suggestions instead of one size-fits-all results.

A previous blog post, published on iPhone 5 launch day, also highlighted the superiority of Foursquare’s maps experience. “With foursquare, you don’t get any map — you get one that’s made just for you,” the post said.

So you get the point. Well played, Foursquare.

Check-in and city exploration app Foursquare is making it even easier to be always in the know when your friends flit about the world — because, of course, it’s not creepy at all to keep super close tabs on your friends.

The places-centric social network today introduced a notifications option called “Always On.” The feature allows members to receive notifications for each and every check-in selected friends’ make, even when they’re not nearby.

The new option is a small addition to the service, which previously only allowed Foursquare users to receive check-in notifications for friends in the same city.

Members can visit a friend’s Foursquare profile to toggle the check-in notification to always on, as pictured below. Note that this is a feature private to friends, and that a Foursquare member can only get the always-on notifications for users who have accepted friendship requests.

Still, the implications are rather interesting. A loved one, for instance, could know that you’ve arrived safely at your destination. A friend could keep tabs on your European tour. Or a boss, if you’ve Foursquare-friended your superior, could get instantly notified when you’ve checked in somewhere scandalous.

As such, the feature reinforces the idea that Foursquare is intended to be a social networking experience shared by real friends, not just mere acquaintances. If anything, this stalker-friendly feature may inspire people to prune and fine-tune their Foursquare friends’ lists.

Photo credit: nan palmero/Flickr

Last we heard from Shoutlet, the company had raised $15 million to make social media marketing easier. Today, Shoutlet is furthering its cause with the addition of Foursquare to its suite of supported social networks.

Shoutlet makes it easy for companies to run their own social marketing campaigns on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. With the inclusion of Foursquare, Shoutlet becomes a more valuable tool for businesses looking to get more information on who is visiting and checking-in.

“There’s a hidden goldmine of activity on Foursquare that marketers are eager to tap into,” Shoutlet CEO Jason Weaver told VentureBeat.

Using the new Foursquare integration, marketers will able to keep a close eye on key Foursquare metrics like check-ins, tips, and mayorships. That information can then be used schedule and run better-researched promotions and campaigns directly through Shoutlet.

While that’s helpful on its own, it’s made more so by Shoutlet’s capability to tie the Foursquare actions into other social networks. So, marketers can, for example, tweet out promotions when a certain number of customers check-in. It’s a powerful, multilayer tool that Weaver says is going to be invaluable to marketers.

“It’s one of the most exciting integrations we’ve done,” Weaver said.

Appeasing its vociferous power users, Foursquare has returned a popular feature for viewing just the check-ins of nearby friends to its mobile application.

Nearby friends, as the filtered view is called, comes back to iPhone and BlackBerry today, giving users of the location-based check-in and exploration application a way to switch between a global view of all activity and a view of activity from friends who are in the same city.

If you recall, the nearby filter had been stricken from the application in early June when Foursquare put out a striking update to the mobile experience that emphasizes social interactions.

At the time, the startup chose to remove the city-centric stream to favor the feed of updates and activities from friends everywhere. The idea was to get people liking, commenting, and engaging with friends’ updates, regardless of their locations, but a vocal minority was none too pleased about losing the capability to see the same-city activities of friends.

The updated version of Foursquare is available now for iPhone and BlackBerry. A similar Android release is coming soon.

Photo credit: qiaomeng/Flickr

With a newfound focus on ad sales, location-based check-in service Foursquare has found itself in foreign territory. To help it settle in and make nice with the neighbors, the company has hired Rob Wilk, a seasoned sales executive moving over from Yahoo.

Wilk will serve as Foursquare’s vice president of sales. The ad sales expert hails from Yahoo, where he was most recently the senior director of search account management and was responsible for optimizing search performance for Yahoo’s advertisers.

The strategic new hire comes just two weeks after Foursquare made its first stab at serving ads to users with Promoted Updates, an advertising product that gives merchants a way to pay to reach local explorers.

Promoted Updates are currently being tested by just 20 merchants, but Foursquare obviously wishes to ride these sponsored posts to profitability some day. And with 17-plus years of industry experience, including ad and agency sales stints inside Yahoo, Wilk should be able to assist the startup in structuring its ad platform and help it with selling its unconventional units to big-time buyers.

For what its worth, Wilk has checked in 140 times, created 5 tips, and has earned himself 11 badges and three mayorships on Foursquare.

Photo credit: Juan Camilo Bernal / Shutterstock.com

Mike Suprovici, the head of mobile app developer Explorence, has one simple mission: to make playing outside fun again.

“I grew really frustrated with my friends taking to video games instead of going outside,” Suprovici told GamesBeat via email. “At the same time, I noticed that mobile sensors were becoming just as powerful as those in Nintendo’s Wii, if not more so.

“What if there was a way to bring the video game outside and into the real world using sensor-based play? Could we make these experiences as engaging as the Wii and Kinect? If so, we have the potential to make outdoor recreational activities as fun as popular video games.”

Suprovici cofounded Explorence in 2010 with Bill Gleim and Mark Thompson. The company launched its first two free iOS apps this summer: StreetDash and BullDash. Both use location services on a player’s phone, like Google Places and Foursquare, to present goals and track a player’s progress during a run, but the second game takes the idea a step further.

BullDash draws inspiration from the annual Running of the Bulls event in Pamplona, Spain. “You push start and before you know it, virtual bulls [are] chasing you,” Suprovici said. “Hurry, or you risk being trampled or gored. The longer you survive, the more coins you earn.”

You may be wondering whether BullDash requires you to keep looking at your iPhone to make sure you’re not about to get the horns — which would make your runs way more entertaining for anyone who sees you going by — but Suprovici explained that the game also includes sound cues: ”Once you plug in your headphones, the app surrounds you with immersive sound effects. You can hear the bulls as they get closer, crowd cheers, and people yelling.”

Explorence’s titles are the latest entries in the emerging augmented reality (AR) market. Sony and Nintendo include AR cards with their 3DS and PlayStation Vita handheld systems, and games like developer Tecmo’s Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir for the 3DS have built longer experiences around altering the player’s environment. But Suprovici believes that AR has a major flaw: “In its current form, AR changes behavior rather then complimenting it,” he says. “Most of the AR applications today are cool but not that useful.”

Suprovici believes that wearable interfaces like Google Glass will help AR transition from fad to functionality. In the meantime, Explorence has two or three more games coming out this year, and he hopes that apps like BullDash get people off of their couches.

“We want to educate people on the notion of outdoor video games,” he says. “Your smartphone has very sophisticated sensors that enable a wide array of interactive play in the real world. This is just the beginning. Also, as a byproduct, we hope the game will encourage people to exercise. One of the complaints is that running is boring. Running for your life? Not so boring.”

Does this mean that TheMostDangerousGameDash is headed to the App Store? To be honest, I’d probably try that.

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After three-plus years, 20 million members, and 2 billion check-ins Foursquare is ready to grow up.

The social network, which lets users check-in at restaurants, retailers, and other venues, is finally incorporating paid ads into its service, like Facebook and Twitter have done.

The New York-based startup is officially kicking off a pilot period for Promoted Updates, an advertising product that builds on the release of Local Updates to give merchants a way to  reach people who may be in the mood to pop by their stores.

“This is the first time ever that we’re allowing businesses to pay to promote their business in Foursquare,” product manager Noah Weiss told me in an interview. “It’s obviously a very exciting milestone for us.”

Old Navy promotes a special on Foursquare

Promoted Updates are essentially the paid version of Local Updates, or status updates for business owners, and will run in the Explore tab inside Foursquare’s mobile applications. Foursquare first introduced Local Updates last week to give merchants a free way to disperse specials, share photos, or communicate with their existing loyal customers on Foursquare.

“We’ve been developing these two in parallel for awhile,” Weiss said. “Local Updates are really about engaging with your existing customers when they’re in the feed, when they’re nearby. [Promoted Updates] … are about showing your business more prominently, hopefully with a compelling piece of content, in the Explore tab, which is where our users go when they’re actually looking for ideas for what to do next in the real world.”

Twenty handpicked small and large merchants including Walgreens, Best Buy, Old Navy, Butter Lane, and The Standard Miami have made financial commitments to spend a minimum amount on campaigns using Promoted Updates.

During the pilot period, advertisers will work with account managers to pick the updates or specials they want to push to new audiences who will, in a perfect world, be driven to visit their stores — not their websites.

Targeting done right?

Promoted Updates will run atop Foursquare’s Explore engine, which is the company’s handcrafted mechanism for pointing people to places they may want to visit. The recommendation engine is fueled by member check-ins, tips, “likes,” lists, and so forth. Where you’ve been, where your friends have been, places similar to ones you like, where you are, and what businesses are popular right now all play a part in Explore.

A Promoted Update for The Standard Miami

“Anything that shows up [as a Promoted Update] is using all the algorithms and magic that power Explore,” Weiss said. “We’re recommending you businesses. This isn’t a display ad for an upcoming summer movie. This is: ‘hey, we think you might really want to go to Hertz because you just landed at the airport.’”

Promotional results will be denoted by a “Promoted” label, and Foursquare has set rules to ensure that its users aren’t overexposed to messages and see a good variety of sponsored content while they’re browsing for new venues to visit.

“Mobile and location-based advertising has a great deal of potential,” Altimeter Group digital advertising and media analyst Rebecca Lieb told me. “We’re already seeing national brands such as Walgreens and American Express experiment with Foursquare as a marketing platform.”

Lieb said that Foursquare’s ability to harness behavioral data in addition to location data will be key to the success of the units.

“It’s important to bear in mind that proximity isn’t everything,” she said. “For example, if a user frequently checks into health food venues and never into fast-food chains, promoting a nearby McDonald’s to that user helps neither the advertiser or the Foursquare user experience.”

Exploring new territory

First and foremost, Foursquare will need to drive its member to use the Explore tab. The company’s mantra of late has been that it’s no longer a check-in service, but a utility that makes the real world easier to use. Now, Foursquare hopes to sell advertisers on its ability to drive people into their stores, a selling point that Facebook’s Sponsored Stories or Twitter’s Promoted Tweets can’t compete with.

But that’s all predicated on the notion that people actually use Foursquare to find new places. Weiss, of course, insisted they do. Usage of Explore has seen twice as many place queries happening since Foursquare released a dramatically redesigned version of its app in early June.

Peggy Gartin, a frequent user of Foursquare’s application and a craft beer connoisseur, said she hardly ever visits the Explore tab. The San Diegan primarily uses Foursquare to check in to places, compete for mayorships, and curate a list of top-notch beer bars. Gartin usually opens the Foursquare application when she’s ready to check in, not when she’s in search of something new to eat or drink.

“I use Foursquare as a way of recording a decision — not making one,” she said.

But Gartin does appreciate Foursquare specials and finds friends’ recommendations an appealing aspect of the experience. If Foursquare were to show her a Promoted Update that featured a business that a friend recommended, sold a product she enjoys, and also included a special, then she would find value in the ad, she said.

Gartin’s remarks shed light on why Foursquare has chosen to limit the release of its ad product to just 20 merchants. Foursquare will use the pilot phase to test the effectiveness of the units, get a reading on what’s resonating with users, and better understand how it can serve national chains and small business owners before building out a self-service platform, Weiss said.

Also still in flux is what and how Foursquare will charge for the units. The standard pay-per-click or CPM models may not be a good fit because Foursquare wishes the ads to drive foot traffic, not web traffic.

“[Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley] has always said that we’ll do it when we’re ready, and we’ll do it in a way that we think makes for a better experience for users,” said Weiss. “The timing now feels right … the product is in a place where it makes a lot of sense for merchants who want to drive customers into their stores and for users who are looking for inspiration about something to try out.”

Photo credit: Sint Smeding/Flickr

Change is underway at check-in service Foursquare, which is one month into a radical redesign that has refocused its entire service around social interactions. Today, the social network  is giving venues a way to communicate with customers, and in the process is laying the foundation for upcoming advertising products that will help Foursquare make money.

Local Updates, now rolling out to the nearly a million merchants who have claimed their businesses on Foursquare, is in its simplest state a status update option for business owners. The free-to-use feature is designed to help merchants reach nearby and loyal customers with timely messages that can include text, one to three photos, and an attached special.

“This is a continuation of the all-new Foursquare that we launched for consumers,” Foursquare product manager Noah Weiss told me in an interview. “Merchants will be able to actually, for the first time, have a communication channel with customers within Foursquare and be able to hopefully help drive those people into their store.”

Merchants who post Local Updates will find that their messages are dispersed to an algorithmically selected group of people Foursquare has determined are most interested in receiving their messages. This boils down to customers that have checked into the merchant’s business several times or who have “liked” the business on Foursquare, though the company also says it factors in additional signals in determining who to show the updates to. Foursquare will also only show the messages to people who are in the same city as the business.

A Foursquare member who checks-in at H&M a lot or has developed a relationship with Starbucks, for instance, will automatically start to receive local updates from those businesses.

The updates are shown in the “Friends” tab of the Foursquare application and flow inline with updates from the user’s Foursquare friends. Recent updates are also shown to people after they check-in to a business for the first time. Users can engage with the updates by leaving comments or “liking” them, just as they would with an update from a friend.

Local Updates have been crafted to work for boutique businesses and national chains alike. H&M, one of Foursquare’s launch partners for the release, can create generic updates that apply to all customers or push out messages that are specific to a particular location.

The release, a boon for businesses, may come as an unwelcome addition to the Foursquare experience for some users. On Foursquare, people don’t follow or friend a company as they do on Twitter or Facebook. This has left merchants with no way to directly reach Foursquare users, other than by creating tips for their own venues. With Local Updates, Foursquare corrects this oversight but also takes on the risky responsibility of determining who to deliver the status updates to. Members easily could be annoyed by the unsolicited merchant updates, which resemble miniature ads. Foursquare, however, believes it can accurately pinpoint just the people who want to receive these messages.

Foursquare, which has more than 20 million members who’ve checked-in a total of 2 billion times, has also yet to monetize its service in a meaningful, sustainable way. But that’s about to change. In giving merchants a voice and a promotional vehicle for reaching customers, Foursquare is also laying the foundation for an ad product that will likely provide merchants with a way to pay to push these messages to a targeted pool of people who aren’t yet their customers.

The company did confirm that paid merchant products are in development but would not detail the timing or nature of those products. The most natural evolution to the Local Updates product, however, would be to provide merchants with for-cost ways to reach Foursquare members who have yet to check-in to their businesses but who are in the area and like similar venues. And Local Updates, as glorified status updates, have all the right qualities to become Foursquare’s version of Twitter’s Promoted Tweets or Sponsored Posts.

New Foursquare merchant dashboard

Foursquare, as part of the Local Updates release, is also relaunching the merchant dashboard and releasing new merchant tools to give businesses better ways to manage their venues and track activity. The dashboard enables businesses to post Local Updates but is also designed to show merchants how people are interacting with updates and how their loyal customer basis is growing and to provide them new tools to manage multiple venues, Weiss said.

Local Updates from launch partners such as H&M, Togo’s Sandwiches, Northern Spy Food Company, New York Public Library, NYC Parks Department, and Outback Steakhouse will start appearing in users’ feeds today. Business can expect to get Local Updates and the new merchant dashboard sometime this week.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Hotshot investor Fritz Lanman has just launched a new iPhone app called Livestar that aims to upend reviews services like Yelp, Metacritic, and Rotten Tomatoes. It even takes shots at Foursquare.

Livestar’s app lets you see reviews for restaurants, movies, and music from “trusted sources” like newspapers and blogs that are near your location. You can also use your Facebook friends and people in your contact list to help get more recommendations. Eventually, the app will also include categories like TV shows, apps, books, apparel, and wine.

“We want to take the friction out of the reviews process,” Lanman said.

If you take a look at the photo above, you can see that the app includes features we’ve all come to expect from a social networking app. You can see your friends’ reviews and recommendations, a news feed for reading and responding to people’s banter about things being reviewed, and there’s a tab for sending out a note to friends, asking them for help when you want to crowdsource an answer.

Lanman says that Livestar will connect with consumers because it fills the reviews void better than any other alternative. He says Yelp is “controlled by a small hyper-local minority” and is filled with “paid reviews.” Foursquare has “high quality sources” (your friends) but the “signal is shitty and you have to rely on check-ins.” Metacritic, Lanman says, does not let you narrow down sources as well as Livestar, as the app lets you refine the search as deep as “comedy movie reviews by the New York Times.”

At this point, I’m not convinced people will use Livestar over Metacrtic or Rotten Tomatoes because those are well-established services that let you get a consensus of trusted sources and everyday users. But when it comes to restaurants (and in the future, mobile apps), Livestar has a strong proposition. People always need to eat, and there isn’t a popular Yelp-like app that aggregates professional restaurant reviews. The app is also constructed in such a way that you can give a place one to five stars by tapping on a rating, and you don’t have to write a review, so people might use it more than Yelp.

Lanman, a former senior director at Microsoft and an investor in Pinterest, Square, Chartbeat, and other notable startups, adds a high level of pedigree to the project. He’s been a deals guy and a savvy investor for a long while, so it’s interesting to see him at the helm of an iPhone app startup.

Seattle-based Livestar has about 10 employees and has raised $2 million in funding to date, with an impressive roster of investors, including SV Angel, Chernin Group, Morado Ventures, and Beehive Ventures, and individuals like Ray Ozzie, Matt Mullenweg, Don Mattrick, Max Ventilla, Hunter Walk, Mike Slade, and Charles Songhurst.

Check out Livestar’s slick video for more on the company’s vision:

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

Travel recommendations company TripAdvisor is moving to restaurant review row and taking a seat next to Yelp and Foursquare with the release of Local Picks, a Facebook application for discovering dining recommendations from friends and locals.

Local Picks, launched Wednesday on Facebook, pulls from TripAdvisor’s vast collection of restaurant reviews, along with Foursquare tips, to provide users with suggestions on where to eat when at home or while traveling abroad.

“We heard from our users that restaurant opinions from locals and friends are extremely valuable,” TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer told VentureBeat. “Local Picks makes these readily available on Facebook, which creates an insightful and fun (even addicting) user experience. TripAdvisor is constantly looking for innovative ways to help people harness the power of their social network for a more memorable travel experience.”

The app covers 850,000 restaurants, each with its own detailed restaurant profile embedded inside Facebook, and aims to surface eateries that locals love. Application users can turn to Local Picks and specify their taste preferences to receive top suggestions for a city. They can also rate restaurants on a one- to five-star scale, leave quick tips, write longer reviews, save places to lists, and “fave” or “want” locales.

The TripAdvisor Facebook application closely echoes the purpose of restaurant reviews site Yelp and even overlaps with Foursquare’s Explore functionality, but does so in a way that’s contained within Facebook and tightly integrated with Timeline. As a result, Local Picks could easily experience a network effect of activity from the social network’s 901 million active users and eventually offer up highly tailored recommendations from friends.

Where Local Picks seems to falter right now is in offering the perfect picks for different types of users, especially those with varying dietary restrictions or specific food and price point preferences. Top picks and recommended places hinge around locals’ and friends’ ratings, and do consider cuisine preferences, but come across as generic.

TripAdvisor, its own publicly traded company as of December 2011 (it was spun out of Expedia), made $48.1 million in net income from $183.7 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2011.

The company nets more than 50 million unique visitors each month and makes a majority of its revenue (79 percent) from click-based advertising.

Photo credit: Grant MacDonald/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Check-in schmeck-in. Leveling up in status, Boston-based SCVNGR has picked up $12 million in funding as part of a two-part, extra-large fund raise to help its one-year-old, burgeoning mobile payment service LevelUp become a leader in the space.

SCVNGR, which seems to scoot by on the “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” mantra of startup life, is the three year-old company that first sparred with Foursquare and others in the venue check-in space. The upstart has spent the past 18 months checking out of check-ins and into transactions with its second product LevelUp, a mobile payment system that borrows from the pay-by-phone-scan system that Starbucks first made popular.

Launched one year ago and live at more than 3,000 locations across eight U.S. cities, including Ben & Jerry’s, Coldstone, and Johnny Rockets chains, LevelUp is an iPhone and Android payment app for consumers, and a terminal and rewards system that merchants can install to process payments and run new customer or loyalty campaigns. LevelUp has plans to launch in 25 additional cities over the summer.

Ultimately, LevelUp’s approach to mobile payments steals the best parts of Starbuck’s widely popular mobile pay program — scannable codes and an attached loyalty program — for a clever, pay-by-phone QR code system that anyone with an iPhone or Android can use right out of the box.

Priebatsch on Foursquare and offloading check-ins for transactions

Wearing his trademark uniform of orange polo and jeans, SCVNGR founder and CEO Priebatsch joined me for a video Skype chat Thursday morning to discuss his company’s latest raise and to reflect on taking the off-ramp on the once traffic-congested highway of the check-in space.

The app’s convenience, and the fact that the company has begun stripping out interchange fees for merchants and adopting a pay-per-performance-only model, is why the system is seeing such rapid adoption by businesses and remarkable engagement from consumers, Priebatsch told me.

Clearly, the switch in focus from check-ins to payments was a turning point for the company. SCVNGR the check-in app still exists, and is doing well Priebatsch insists (I’m skeptical), but roughly 85 percent of the startup’s resources are now allocated to LevelUp.

“We, about a year-and-a-half ago, made this interesting and kind of aggressive decision to go after the transaction,” he said. “If you look at our biggest competitor at the time, Foursquare, they did not. They made a very different choice. And usually when you make a choice, you kind of create a rift in the space-time continuum and you only get to see the choice you made. You don’t get to look across the rift … so, for us, it’s interesting to watch Foursquare … to watch what the other remaining company in the location-based space is doing now that they have to evolve a little bit beyond the check-in because that value proposition is fuzzy.”

Priebatsch believes, of course, that SCVNGR took the right path and is headed in the more lucrative direction. He points to today’s Foursquare app revamp as proof.

“Foursquare’s most recent product update moves them to be closer and closer to Yelp,” he said. “Because they choose to stay in the check-in space, and the check-in space doesn’t add enough value to support a company of their valuation, the natural evolution has to be to become a reviews site.”

Show me the money

LevelUp, though, has a seemingly unimpressive registered user base of just 200,000 people. Still, that’s enough to make it the second largest mobile payment network in the U.S., second only to Starbucks, at least by Priebatsch’s estimates.

Roughly 65 percent of users are active every month, about 50 percent are active every two weeks, and the average user is using LevelUp two to three times a week, he said. The mobile pay system processes $2 million a month, with an average transaction size just under $10. It’s worth noting that the LevelUp business is not yet profitable, though Priebatsch says it’s trending in that direction.

click to enlarge

LevelUp will also support 60 percent of POS systems by the end of year, he added, which should make its nationwide roll-out go all the more smoothly.

Even the city of Boston is on board. The city, looking to help its businesses level-up with citizens, has plastered subway cars with LevelUp posters (pictured right) that let consumers scan QR codes to get $5 to spend through LevelUp at local merchants.

Still, it’s hard to get a good read on LevelUp’s real health. Investor’s doubling-down on bets and new firms signing on for the mobile pay gamble are all good signs. There’s also the fact that the total volume of transactions processed through LevelUp is growing by 15 percent every seven days.

SCVNGR’s $12 million partial round includes participation from existing investors Highland Capital, Google Ventures, Balderton Capital, and new investors Continental Investors and Transmedia Capital, and brings SCVNGR’s to-date raise up to $32 million. Priebatsch said the remainder of this round will likely close in 45 days and include participation from one to two larger firms to make the total amount raised “a fair amount larger.”

SCVNGR is headquartered in Boston. The startup also has offices in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Diego, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco.

Fighting AIDS through Foursquare check-ins and lattes, non-profit (RED), Starbucks, and the location-based startup have partnered up for a 10-day fundraising and AIDS awareness campaign.

From June 1 to 10, Starbucks will donate $1 to the Global Fund, the recipient of (RED) money, for every Foursquare check-in at any of its locations in the U.S. and Canada. The partnership and check-in campaign, which will raise up to $250,000, aims to spread the word via social media channels around (RED)’s Rush to Zero campaign, an effort that seeks to eliminate the mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015.

(RED) is the non-profit founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver in 2006 to raise money for the Global Fund and fight AIDS in Africa. The organization has raised more than $190 million to date, and Starbucks has long been a RED partner having already contributed $10 million to the Global Fund.

“We are excited that through (RED)’s check-in activation with Foursquare, our customers have an easy way to help make a difference towards an AIDS free generation by 2015, a hugely important milestone in the fight against AIDS,” Starbucks public affairs executive vice president Vivek Varma said in a statement.

Foursquare says the fundraising effort is the startup’s largest non-profit check-in campaign to date. The startup will also be commemorating the proxy donations by doling out virtual (RED) Rush to Zero badges to members who participate.

Photo credit: Jennifer Van Grove

Checking in to the power of nostalgia, Foursquare is bringing members’ past location moments back to life with a reworked history page that doubles as a check-in time machine.

Friday, Foursquare has remodeled the web-based version of the history page to let members take a journey down memory lane. The improved page now includes search, and time, place, and people filters for letting people rediscover their favorite venues or the places they visited while on vacation.

“You can easily jump to all your past check-ins from any month or year, and even filter them by who you were with, what type of place you were at, or which neighborhood, city, or country you were in. We’ll show you your check-in photos, comments, and friends who were there,” Foursquare explained in a blog post.

click to enlarge

The history page incorporates some of the same of elements of Facebook Timeline, the social network’s storybook-take on the personal profile. The page includes a map of all check-ins, weaves photos, friends, and comments prominently into the experience, and will eventually allow people to enhance their past by adding tips or creating lists.

I’ve written before about the power in remembering the past and the role of location in memories, specifically as it pertains to Foursquare and its battle to prove to the public that there’s more to check-ins than points and badges.

“To moms, dads, uncles, aunts, kids, sisters, brothers, and you and me, location has meaning, but only in its ability to enhance a story, not to win some virtual badge,” I wrote. “It’s this approach to location, as a behind-the-scenes memory assistant, that will resonate with mainstream social media audiences,” I said, giving a nod to Facebook and Timeline.

With the new history page, Foursquare is wisely following in Facebook’s footsteps and helping its users better understand the why behind each check-in, photo, tip, or comment.

A Foursquare spokesperson said the company does not have immediate plans to carry the features over to mobile.

Photo credit: Bashed/Flickr

As check-in champion Foursquare prepares to make a run at making money, the startup’s vice president of business development, Tristan Walker, has checked out.

Walker, who holds an MBA from Stanford and was once an intern at Twitter, announced his resignation from Foursquare in a blog post this morning. Walker is heading to Silicon Valley’s youngest elite venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz where he’ll serve as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Holger Luedorf now heads up Foursquare’s business development initiatives.

“The opportunity at foursquare enabled me to think big, take risks, re-imagine what’s possible … and following an incredible journey, I have decided to resign from foursquare to pursue my next big dream,” Walker said.

Walker developed Foursquare’s significant brand relationships and was the mastermind behind the startup’s most progressive initiatives, including a massive loyalty campaign with American Express.

“There’s no better place for him to land than this entrepreneur in residence role at Andreessen Horowitz,” Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley told VentureBeat. “Tristan’s big thinking and drive have been invaluable assets to foursquare over the last few years. His work has helped solidify foursquare as a strong marketing tool for brands and a data-driven loyalty platform for merchants,” a company spokesperson added.

The exit could be perceived as a blow to Foursquare, especially as it prepares to take its first stab at a real monetization strategy with an ad platform slated for launch this summer, according to a recent AdAge report. VentureBeat has independently confirmed with multiple sources that Foursquare plans to test an ad platform powered by its Explore engine.

Couple Walker’s resignation with the recent ouster of co-founder Naveen Selvadurai and what you have are company growing pains visible for the world to see.

Why might there be trouble? Foursquare, as VentureBeat has previously reported, is a company in flux. Known primarily as a check-in service, the startup is battling a self-imposed identify crisis and hoping to prove to people, and soon advertisers, that its offering spans beyond the tiny little niche of check-in apps — just 6 percent of online adults use geolocation apps — and is in fact a tool for real-world discovery.

Foursquare is also no longer the industry’s darling up-and-coming mobile app, despite recently surpassing 20 million users. Instagram, Pinterest, Viddy, and others have stolen the company’s thunder; they are the new hotter-than-hot services web denizens and press are salivating over. And nearly a year after raising $50 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, Foursquare has yet to prove that it’s worth a $600 million valuation.

But don’t read too much into the high profile departures, they’re nothing more than normal exits for a three year-old startup still finding its way, Crowley said. Crowley referred to Foursquare’s current operations as “organized chaos.” With a 115 people on staff, Foursquare is brewing the next PayPal mafia, he said, meaning that he fully expects a handful of staffers to leave and build their own companies.

“We’re a machine now … Foursquare is a completely different place than it was a couple of years ago,” Crowley said. “Everyone here is bullish on the direction of the company.”

Walker could not be reached for comment.

Photo credit: Mari Sheibley/ Flickr. Used with permission.

Merchants looking to skip the line and get instant access to Foursquare’s business tools need only grease the wheels with a sawbuck.

The location-based discovery service, which offers merchants free access to analytics and admin tools, is now enabling businesses to claim and verify their locations instantly for a one-time $10 fee.

U.S. merchants who fork over the $10 fee will get immediate access to the administrative tools for offering Foursquare specials, tracking real-time data about patrons, and editing their page information.

“We rolled out the new claim flow to give business owners the option to instantly verify their listings,” a Foursquare spokesperson told VentureBeat. “They can still verify listings for free via mail, but this typically takes several weeks, so instant verification is much more efficient. You can claim your listing and be looking at real-world analytics within a matter of minutes.”

Tuesday’s surcharge is a relatively minor addition that should remove a bit of friction from the business sign-up process — don’t expect it to bring in any substantial revenue for the startup.

Foursquare, which has 20 million users, says it now has 750,000 businesses already using its complimentary merchant services. The merchant figure is only a smidgen higher than the 500,000 number the startup touted in July of last year.

Photo credit: zoomar/Flickr

Foursquare’s place check-in is moving into new territory Tuesday. Online food ordering and delivery service Delivery.com is integrating with Foursquare so that customers can virtually check in to a businesses when they place an online order.

Through the integration, the appropriately named food and beverage delivery service will enable its customers to connect to Foursquare to not only check-in when they order on the web, but also view food hotspots, sort results by check-ins, see venue photos, reviews, and tips, and leave tips of their own.

“Shopping online has been a singular type of business,” Delivery.com CEO Jed Kleckner told VentureBeat. “There is a need and interest on the part of the consumer to understand what other people have to say about things they want to purchase … we can provide that depth.”

Delivery.com is very much a competitor to popular food ordering sites such as GrubHub and Seamless, and has 500,000 users, supports 10,000 merchants, and operates in more than 50 U.S. cities. But it has grander ambitions and hopes to assist all merchants in the perishable goods category. To that end, the company recently expanded to include online grocery shopping and already allows ordering from wine and liquor stores.

“[Foursquare integration] educates the consumer and enriches the Delivery.com experience for our existing customer base,” Kleckner said of Tuesday’s site-wide release.

Foursquare platform evangelist Akshay Patil confirmed with VentureBeat that this is the first time a site of this size has enabled virtual check-ins. But in disappointing news to those looking to stay inside and still ramp up Foursquare cred, Delivery.com Foursquare check-ins won’t count toward points, mayorships, or badges. Check-ins will, however, feed into and enhance the data pool that powers Foursquare’s Explore discovery tool, we’re told.

The data exchange is one that could add infinite value to the Delivery.com experience, and the site could also experience a healthy network effect where new customers are pulled in from the messages pushed out by those checking-in at check out.

Founded in 2004, Delivery.com is based in New York and has roughly 50 employees. The company has raised an undisclosed sum of venture capital.

Photo credit: spike55151/Flickr

Let the squealing begin. Oink, the also-ran mobile ratings application from Internet celebrity Kevin Rose’s startup Milk, is heading to the slaughter house after just four months of existence.

Oink is being shut down as Milk shifts focus to other projects, the startup announced Wednesday. The application’s corresponding website, Oink.com, will be shuttered by the end of the month and members are being encouraged to download their ratings and pictures should they wish to salvage something of their Oink experience.

The item-ranking and mini reviews application launched as a hybrid of Yelp, Instagram, and Foursquare and set out to help iPhone users discover what to do when they’re out and about. It was a hodgepodge of ideas all mashed into one application, and it did find some early favor with users. The application saw more than 150,000 downloads in its first month.

“Oink was our first test and, in preparing to move onto the next project, we’ve decided to shut it down to help focus our efforts,” Milk said in a statement posted to the Oink website.

The statement comes off as very nonchalant, and is similar to the way someone would shuck off a bad day — oh well, on to the next one. But in a past conversation with VentureBeat, Rose talked optimistically about Oink, even suggesting that it could prove popular enough to allow for a future business model. It also stands to reason that Milk, which invested five months of development into the Oink application prior to its release, never intended to spend more time developing the application than it did supporting its growth.

San Francisco-based Milk raised $1.5 million from Google Ventures shortly after the launch of Oink.

[via The Next Web]

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds/Flickr

In the name of educated exploration, check-in and place-discovery application Foursquare is now providing members with merchants’ hours of operations.

The incremental update, introduced Friday, means that people can turn to Foursquare for a detailed breakdown of a venue’s business hours. The operational information, should businesses provide it, may even include happy hour times, kitchen hours, and any other special periods.

The subtle enhancement, in conjunction with newly added menu items and updates to the company’s Explore tool, helps bring the service closer to its goal of becoming a one-stop shop for location-based content. It could also prevent people from swapping over to competitor and newly public company Yelp for the same info.

We should note, however, that since businesses have to add their hours manually for each of their venues, it could be awhile before this feature becomes a standard part of the Foursquare experience.

Photo credit: f2point8/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

[Update: Loopt founder Sam Altman says the 500 DAU number is off by more than 100 times, and says he'll be posting data shortly to prove it. We'll update more as soon as he posts the data.]

[Update 3/13/2012: Our original source has revised the estimate. Combined with another independent source, and accounting for all the platforms that Loopt is available on as well as web traffic, this corroborates what Altman is saying. We apologize to Loopt for getting the numbers wrong.]

A company that was at one time said to be seeking a valuation of $500 million sold three years later for a paltry $43.4 million. The company in question is none other than Loopt, and its demise can be attributed to the loss of its lifeblood: users.

Loopt’s daily active users — the folks opening and running the location app on any given day — were disappearing, VentureBeat has learned. Specifically, Loopt had as few as 500 daily active users at one point recently, a source familiar with the company’s app activity told VentureBeat.

When reached for comment, Loopt CEO Sam Altman said the 500 DAU figure is “off by orders of magnitude.”

Once a pioneer in the location-based application arena, Loopt was picked up by prepaid debit card company Green Dot in a head-scratching deal that was most likely orchestrated as a marriage of convenience by joint investor Sequoia Capital. (Sequoia has invested millions in both companies.) Based on the disastrously low daily active user figure, it seems fair to speculate that the deal was a forced merger designed to conserve capital and talent — and maybe even save a little face.

Green Dot could certainly find value in Loopt’s patent portfolio, and Loopt CEO Sam Altman, in an interview with AllThingsD, spun the sale as a way to tie location to payments. But really the exit is admission that Loopt, as an application designed to connect people, failed to innovate fast enough as up-and-coming startups such as Foursquare found more creative ways to connect people and places by way of mobile devices.

That’s not to say Foursquare will avoid a similar fate. History tends to repeat itself. The New York-based company raised $50 million at an estimated $600 million valuation last year, but has since been struggling to redefine itself as more than a check-in service. There’s also trouble at the top. Co-founder Naveen Selvandurai announced this past week that he was leaving the company. Kara Swisher at AllThingsD called the situation tense and we’ve heard from multiple sources that Selvandurai was pushed out.

With all the turmoil and turnover in the location-based application space of late, it seems fair to resurface the question of whether the genre is overrated. Perhaps location is a feature and not a business, after all.

Photo credit: Domiriel/Flickr

A single minute may be barely enough time to construct a rational thought, but it’s time enough for social media denizens to inundate the web with their status updates, tweets, checkins, and photos.

Every 60 seconds in social media, two million videos are viewed on YouTube, 700,000 messages are delivered by way of Facebook, 175,000 tweets are fired off into the ether, and 2,000 Foursquare check-ins tell the world where we are.

If the volume of all this social media activity doesn’t astound you, perhaps a visual representation of the data will put things into prospective.

Social Jumpstart, a social media resource for small business, has created an infographic, shared exclusively with VentureBeat, to add color to the wealth of publicly available data on the hottest social networks and applications of our day.

We already knew that the web is in a tizzy over Pinterest, that Twitter is the talk of the town (and television networks), and that Facebook is the belle of the Internet ball. But when considered together, one thing seems clear: social media has taken over the world. Whether we’re using our 1,440 minutes each day wisely, however, is a question probably best left unanswered.

Note: A Stumbleupon representative told VentureBeat the company now does 25,000 stumbles in a minute.

Photo credit: ladymixy_uk/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

A hungry sojourner should have an easier time tracking down a good meal if updated iPhone and Android applications from Foursquare deliver on their promise to simplify place discovery.

The New York location-based company, currently in the midst of a rebrand, has shipped colorful Explore tab updates to its most popular mobile applications.

The Explore tab, the home of place discovery, now features smarter search capabilities, a new navigation for quick access to top picks and trending locations, the ability to search beyond your present location, and the option to filter results to just the places your friends have been. The update, in essence, lets people explore the world either using the tips and check-in data of Foursquare’s growing user base or by tapping the expertise of their friends.

Also new on mobile are the menus of nearly 250,000 U.S. restaurants — which equates to 13 million menu items — accesible from venue pages. Menu and pricing information was added to the web experience a few weeks ago and has now been ported over to mobile.

The mobile updates underscore Foursquare’s commitment to the “virtuous circle of location-based content,” as head of product Alex Rainert previously said. The startup would like to see application users jumping between mobile and web products and serendipitously discovering new places of interest. Foursquare’s ultimate goal: to become your one-stop shop for location-based content.

But while current Foursquare explorers will no doubt find the improvements useful, the improvements are merely incremental. The company still has a ways to go before it outgrows a self-inflicted identity crisis.

Photo credit: RachelEllen/Flickr

Foursquare, the New York-based location check-in startup, gives merchants the ability to operate their own business and brand pages to share tips and connect with customers.

Now, the company is giving businesses a nearby map that collects all of their venues on a map so would-be patrons can find the closest location. If you’re on a specific venue page, Starbucks for instance, you see other close-by Starbucks locations. The feature is unfortunately web-only for the time being, we’re told.

The update may seem minor, but Foursquare founder and CEO Dennis Crowley told VentureBeat that this improvement points back to the significance of the startup’s growing data pool. Foursquare’s data structure now knows the difference between big chains, small franchises, and mom-and-pop shops, he said, which gives the company the ability to group venues and surface them for members with the appropriate context.

How might something like this come in handy? You could quickly find the nearest Starbucks locale for your coffee fix, visit the closest 24 Hour Fitness on your business trip, or discover that your favorite restaurant has more locations than you realized.

The addition also comes as Foursquare continues to make both incremental and major improvements, including Explore recommendations and menu items, to the overall web experience. Foursquare’s website sees roughly 1 million visitors each day. As such, the property represents an important channel for the startup as it strives to be the go-to source for location-based content.

The new menu feature, powered by SinglePlatform, provides members with a detailed look at more than 13 million menu items offered at restaurants, with caloric information and pricing available for some locations.

Menus can be found on the web and at the company’s mobile site – but not yet inside the mobile apps.

Foursquare, the startup that popularized the place check-in, is in the midst of a rebranding initiative to become better known as your one-stop-shop for location-based content. The startup has more than 15 million members who’ve checked in at venues a total of 1.5 billion times to date. Foursquare is using that data to make intelligent recommendations, via the Explore feature, on where people can go to eat, drink and be merry at any given time.

With the addition of menus, Foursquare has taken a far less scientific route to add even more practical, everyday purpose to the experience, especially for the passive person who’d prefer to consume information rather than share it. Menus might even keep people from navigating over to competitor Yelp for more venue details (Yelp listings don’t yet include full menus).

Of course, we’d love to have our cake and eat it too. That is, we’d like have menu items associated with related Foursquare tips and vice versa. Now that would be nifty.

[Image via bradleygee/Flickr]

Chances are that the insights gathered from one-and-a-half billion check-ins and 15 million tips are better than your own eyes and ears at sleuthing out the best places to eat, drink and see nearby or afar. At least that’s the logic and science behind Foursquare Explore, a popular recommendation feature migrating from mobile to web today.

Foursquare is the New York-based location-sharing startup that popularized the place check-in. But spend a few minutes talking to Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and you’ll soon realize that the startup, as he sees it, is in the business of building software that makes the real world easier to use. And that’s where Explore — first introduced in the company’s mobile apps in March 2011 — comes in.

Explore on the web, rolling out to users now, is a personalized search engine for places that gives you Foursquare’s best picks for where to go, whatever your fancy. The feature is powered by the startup’s always-expanding, massive check-in and tips repository. It even factors in your personal preferences and your friends’ previous activities.

“There are place recommendations out there are one-size-fits-all,” Foursquare’s head of product Alex Rainert told VentureBeat. “But we have data to help you find the places you might like,” he added, indicating that the places Foursquare recommends via Explore are unique to each user. “The more you check in, the smarter it gets.”

You can “explore” by browsing through food, coffee, nightlife, shopping, arts and outdoors categories, or by searching for something more specific, like “vegan food,” or something far more ambiguous, say “fun.” The results are ranked by their likelihood to please.

The web-based version of Explore nicely complements the mobile version, and comes with a few enhancements. Web searches via Explore, for instance, are not limited to nearby results, meaning you can search anywhere in the world and plan ahead for future trips.

The web interface also awards the searcher with more real-estate for visual discovery and additional context. A large map at the right should help you quickly pinpoint venue locations, while a left-hand venue menu provides detailed venue snippets and allows for one-click place-saving to to-do lists (fun fact: Foursquare members have created more than 500,000 to-do lists).

“Explore is part of the virtuous circle of location-based content that we’re trying to design products around,” Rainert said.

That circle, as Rainert described it, is the lifecycle that starts with the person discovering location-based content of interest and ends with her finding that content when its most relevant. The cycle has you discovering a new place or activity via Explore, saving that place to a to-do list and then receiving a notification when you’re nearby (with Radar), and it’s a process that the startup would like to see uninterrupted as you jump between web and mobile applications.

And while the mobile applications have consistently been top priority for the startup, the company is finding that its latest redesign has opened the door for creating even richer experiences specifically for its growing population of web visitors. Foursquare’s website now sees about a million visitors each day, Rainert said.

The company is so committed to cross-platform place discovery that it recently hired Andrew Hogue, a former Google senior engineer, to the lead its search and data team and improve the Explore experience.

“We want people to think of Foursquare as a place to store all the things they want to do,” Rainert stressed.

What is Foursquare? The answer is far more complex than it should be. The startup’s purpose in life is so muddled that it now finds itself in the midst of a self-imposed identity crisis that could cause it to fall victim to Facebook.

“The biggest misconception about Foursquare is that it is a check-in service,” founder Dennis Crowley told me in a recent in-depth interview. “We’re most interested in taking the data from check-ins to model what’s happening in the real world, and help people find new things … the data is more important than the check-in.”

What does that mean? In Crowley’s mind it means that every check-in contributes to a growing pool of information that will make Foursquare a transformative way to experience the offline world.

Crowley boils down Foursquare’s grand vision to this: “We’re making software that makes the real world easier to use.”

Nonsense, you might say: Foursquare is a check-in service, something that primarily lets people “check in” to restaurants, bars and other venues that they frequent.

You’d be right — to an extent. Foursquare popularized the act of checking into a venue (or an inanimate object) to share your location with friends. And in doing so, it’s become branded as nothing more than check-in service. It’s a label the startup scoffs at and loathes.

Worse still, Foursquare’s claim to fame could wind up making the company itself check in to an early grave.

Why? Because regular folks can’t relate to explicit location-sharing — only six percent of online adults are open to using geolocation apps — and points and badges aren’t compelling enough reasons to warrant a change in their behaviors. To moms, dads, uncles, aunts, kids, sisters, brothers, and you and me, location has meaning, but only in its ability to enhance a story, not to win some virtual badge.

Last year’s family trip to Disneyland, for instance, is a special occasion that brings joy in its remembrance. The kids eating cotton candy by Cinderella’s castle (and getting sticky hands in the process), nearly losing your lunch on the Matterhorn, your husband getting drenched on Splash Mountain: These are all poignant memories that you can cherish for a lifetime. Location is a huge part of this story, not because you remembered to check in to the rides, but because your location is the fabric that weaves each moment into a cohesive tale.

This is what makes Foursquare vulnerable to Facebook, even though Facebook got out of the check-in business months ago. Now that Facebook Timeline has finally rolled out to the social network’s more than 800 million members, the scrapbooking feature provides people with a rich lens for looking back at all the good times they’ve shared by way of Facebook. Tagging your location on a photo or status update becomes a way to add color to each and every experience. And because Facebook Timeline collects all of these tags and plots them on an interactive map, it’s offering you a way to go back in time and soak in the past.

It’s this approach to location, as a behind-the-scenes memory assistant, that will resonate with mainstream social media audiences. And Facebook knows it.

“[The check-in] is cool, but it’s only part of the equation,” Facebook Timeline product manager Sam Lessin told me. “I think that use case will certainly still power serendipity, but it’s only part of the story. We’re in the early stages of location being an awesome story-telling medium.”

When you add a location to a status update or photo, you know that you’re adding something of substance to your Timeline and your map, Lessin said. He believes that this notion will compel users to go back and add locations to past moments in an effort to create a more complete storybook.

Timeline lives up to its potential as the digital equivalent of the scrapbook, and it’s changed the way I use Facebook. Now, a moment worth remembering in real life is one that I also want chronicled on my Timeline, and so I make it a point to post a photo or status update, and add a location tag. If I’m already doing that on Facebook, why would I also want to check in on Foursquare?

The answer is a lot less clear than used it to be, and that’s extremely problematic for Foursquare, because it’s pretty much the last man standing with skin in the check-in game. One-time challenger Gowalla did little for the location-sharing cause and needed to pivot to make sense of location, but that didn’t really work either. Bizzy busted out of the “check out” business a few months back. (“Who?” you say. Exactly.) Brightkite died long ago, Yelp seems to have lost interest in its copycat check-in feature, and even Facebook once tried and failed at check-ins.

Full disclosure: I am the same reporter who predicted that Foursquare would be the next Twitter more than two years ago. I would still argue that I’m right in many ways, so I asked Crowley to explain what he means by “software that makes the real world easier to use.”

He speaks of the company’s Explore feature, which makes use of check-in and tips data to help you find nearby venues that you should try.

And then there’s Radar, Foursquare’s first attempt at predicting what you should be doing right now. Radar, which works on iOS 5 devices, is an opt-in, always-on feature that, when enabled, will automatically alert you when friends are checked in nearby or when you’re close to a venue on one of your to-do lists.

Radar, Crowley insists, is by far the company’s most ambitious project and is still very early stage. He envisions it as a way for you discover something interesting nearby without ever needing to open the app. So, in theory, you will be able to walk around your town or a foreign city, just as you normally would, and get suggestions for new things to do.

“[With Radar on], the app is waking up and saying, ‘Hey, Dennis, this is something you want to pay attention to,’” Crowley said. “We have enough data and users to make this stuff happen. We know which places are popular Thursday morning or Tuesday night, and we can help you out when you’re out of context.”

Where does the check-in fit into all this? It’s an explicit action that powers these place recommendations, but it’s no longer the core of the Foursquare experience, Crowley said. Enough power users have contributed enough data — more than a billion check-ins to date — to create content and recommendations that are useful for more passive users: those who just want to consume information.

In fact, he said, Foursquare is seeing a growing percentage of users open the app on a regular basis and not check in. They’re using the app to find stuff nearby, he added, and that’s perfectly okay with him.

The startup’s “Oprah moment,” Crowley said, will be when people realize that they can rediscover their own neighborhoods. But it’s an epiphany that needs to happen sooner rather than later.

“We have to go through this rite of passage,” Crowley said of the company’s perception problem. He likens the growing pains to Twitter’s similar battle a few years back, when it was then hazed by the press and considered just a purveyor of pointless babble.

“We’re building stuff that no one has built before, and it’s going to be a big deal. This time next year, a lot of these issues will have gone away,” Crowley said.

So what we have here are two fundamentally different approaches to location: Foursquare is taking the scientific route, while Facebook is traveling down the emotional path. Both takes are quite compelling, but now that Facebook Timeline is live for all, Foursquare’s clock is ticking.

Image via giaomeng/Flickr