Foursquare for iPhone, Android enhanced with new Explore features and menu info

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 … Continue Reading

Foursquare familiarizes the unknown, adds nearby locations to business pages

Foursquare is attempting to make the unfamiliar less mysterious with the addition of familiar nearby places to hundreds of business pages Friday.

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 … Continue Reading

Foursquare gets meatier with addition of 13M menu items

Delivering on its promise to make the real world easier to use, location-sharing startup Foursquare has added the menus of nearly 250,000 U.S. restaurants to its service today.

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 … Continue Reading

Foursquare buttons up the Web, lets you save places for offline discovery

Location-based startup Foursquare has released new features to help make the places you read about on the Web more easily discoverable when you’re out-and-about, wandering the world.

New York-based Foursquare is fast-approaching its third birthday and has been transitioning out of the terrible twos by reminding users that it’s more than just a check-in-and-forget-it location-based app. To that end, the company has revamped its website, introduced a slew of new expertise badges and added a … Continue Reading

Foursquare finally makes its website as cool as its mobile apps

Location service Foursquare is showing off its new coat of paint. The company today unveiled a website redesign with a whole new experience for people sitting at their desks. What started as a check-in game all of a sudden seems a lot more like a formidable business in the making.

The fun of Foursquare has long been the ability to check in at destinations using a mobile phone and share location information with friends, but … Continue Reading

Foursquare starts leveling-up expertise badges

Foursquare is updating the functionality of its “expertise badges” to make a user’s history of check-ins a better representation of real-life experiences, the company announced today.

Foursquare users can obtain expertise badges by checking in multiple times to several different venues in the same category. For instance, if you check in to five different pizza places in the same area, you’d get an expertise badge for eating pizza. Those badges are then displayed in a … Continue Reading

Old Navy doles out deals to Shopkick app users

Discount shoppers, rejoice. Mobile shopping startup Shopkick has added Old Navy, a Gap Inc. brand, to its arsenal of retail partners, the company announced Tuesday.

With the Shopkick iPhone or Android app, you earn rewards points, called “kicks,” by just walking into any one the startup’s partner stores — no purchase necessary. These can be redeemed for special offers and deals. Participating retailers are provided with a small hardware box capable of verifying an application … Continue Reading

How Foursquare is moving beyond the check-in

“We want to build tools that change the way all the people in this room experience the real world,” said Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley at the Web 2.0 Summit today, as he described his company’s retreat from the game mechanics that first made the check-in service a success.

With more than 10 million downloads, Foursquare is the category leader for location services, even as it moves away from its initial offering. Crowley said Foursquare is … Continue Reading

สวัสดี, Foursquare! Checkin app adds five new languages

By adding five new languages, location-based social network Foursquare has opened the door to 1.5 billion more users. The company launched translations of its app in Bahasa Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Thai, it said today on its blog,

Foursquare currently has more than 10 million members globally, and the application works on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. The company launched French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish translations in February 2011. According to the blog, the … Continue Reading

Location-based social network BuzzMob launches. We’re not sure if it’s awesome, yet.

Let’s all give a warm, startup-community welcome to BuzzMob, which officially launched today. Hi, BuzzMob!

The Irvine-based company has made a mobile app, also called BuzzMob (free), for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad (their Android app is in the works) that connects users by location and creates a real-time, live community.

No no, you haven’t meet them before. It might sound familiar (Foursquare, Loopt, Brightkite, Gowalla, One etc.) but this company says it’s different. … Continue Reading

Foursquare wins major victory with death of Facebook Places

While Facebook was rolling out some changes to its privacy policies today, the company also quietly announced it was killing off the Foursquare-like Places function inside of its mobile app.

The Facebook Places feature was unveiled a year ago and let users “check-in” to various locations. Many saw this as a serious threat to other social location services like Foursquare and Gowalla because Facebook has an incredible number of users. But by October you could … Continue Reading

Foursquare finds revenue stream in daily deals partnerships

Popular check-in application Foursquare, which recently reached 10 million global users, today announced on its blog that it will be offering local daily deals from 5 new partners, including LivingSocial, Gilt City, Zozi,  AT&T Interactive and BuyWithMe.

Similar to how current local business specials are displayed within the “explore” tab, the new deals will show in real time and enable users to quickly secure a deal with just a few clicks. To avoid any spamming … Continue Reading

Foursquare partners with American Express for deal check-ins

Just after announcing that it passed 10 million users, location-based check-in service Foursquare has said it is partnering with American Express to give members even better deals when they check in at merchants’ stores across the country.

This partnership and any similar future offerings will act as Foursquare’s chance to elevate itself over other location-based services like Facebook Places and Gowalla.

The first two notable deals Foursquare is offering from the AmEx partnership are from … Continue Reading

LocalResponse eyes big brands with full-service check-in advertising

LocalResponse, a company that lets businesses monitor and respond to check-ins, today announced the launch of its service for agencies and brands. The company initially rolled out the service to local merchants just two weeks ago.

The company aggregates what it calls “explicit” and “implicit” check-ins across multiple social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Gowalla, Foursquare and others. Explicit check-ins refer to those from sites like Foursquare and Gowalla that announce a specific location and time, … Continue Reading

Apple releases iPhone location update one week after it promises fix

Apple today released an update that fixes the iPhone’s location tracking bug — just one week after it promised a fix for the problem.

The company’s quick response tells us that it’s taking the concerns around the location issue seriously. Apple initially said the update would come in the next few weeks.

The update, iOS 4.3.3, is now available for download from iTunes. For Verizon iPhone users, it will show up as iOS 4.2.8.

As … Continue Reading

Apple's iPhone location tracking bug fix may land in next two weeks

Apple has said it will fix the iPhone’s location tracking “bug” with an update in the next few weeks, but that fix may be coming sooner than you think, according to mobile site Boy Genius Report.

BGR, which apparently has its hands on the update (iOS 4.3.3) early, writes that it will land in the next two weeks, “possibly sooner.” It’s not exactly Earth-shattering news, but it’s clear that Apple doesn’t want this issue to … Continue Reading

PhoneTag app promises to keep social media meet-ups private

Smartphone app startup Ripple Mobile today debuted its PhoneTag application, which uses GPS-based technology to help mobile device users share a user’s real-time location and coordinate connections privately with their friends and contacts.

PhoneTag lets a user select as many people as they want to be in a session — whether those people are contacts from their address book, someone they just met, business associates or anybody else with a smartphone. Users can set the … Continue Reading

Flirtomatic's iPhone app introduces location-based time-travel flirting

Flirtomatic, the mobile flirting network with over 4 million members, launched a new iPhone app today that uses GPS and Google Maps to let members time-travel to flirt with others by location.

Flirtomatic’s app, which had connected members on the basis of preferences, interests, location and other information stored in their profiles, now includes a location feature and allows members to search for, and connect with, people who’ve been or will be in the same … Continue Reading

MeMap app lets you track Facebook friends on one central map

MeMap launched a mobile app today that aims to bring together all of your Facebook friends’ location data from various location-based networks and put it on a single map.

That includes data shared with Facebook and Facebook Connect by third-party location-based social networks like Foursquare, GoWalla, Buzzd and others.

The San Francisco-based startup said the new app puts Facebook on one central app accessible by mobile devices. The app is available only on the iPhone, … Continue Reading

Facebook lets users check-in to events

Facebook may be looking to add its check-in feature to more than just Places today as some events appear to now have a check-in button, according to AllFacebook.com.

Currently, it’s unknown whether Facebook is rolling out this new feature to everyone or just testing it, but it may prove to be a good idea if it’s able to introduce more subscribers to the check-in feature. It could also give subscribers a way to share during … Continue Reading