Foursquare gets a makeover, zooms in on personalization

Foursquare, the location-based service that’s been having an identity crisis, has treated itself to a makeover, which any girl will tell you is the cure for feeling awful after a breakup.

And Foursquare’s makeover is head-to-toe: A new logo, a redesign, a move of all checkins to its sister app, Swarm, and a new focus on personalization.

This last piece, personalized local search, is really what this new overhaul is about, according to the company’s blog.

Why should two very different people get the same recommendations when they visit Paris? Or the same list of places when they’re looking for a bar?

Foursquare says that once users “add tastes, follow experts, or even just walk around for a few days,” the app will start really tailoring recommendations to them.

Moreover, while it’s moving all checkins to Swarm, the two apps will now look the same and work together in sync, letting users chose if they want just one or both apps without worrying about different and disjointed experiences.

Since announcing the Foursquare-Swarm split back in May, Foursquare has been making a lot of changes, including beginning to charge some businesses to access checkin data, a sign it might have finally figured out a business plan.

Last week, Yelp announced a revamped API and 25,000 calls-per-day limit to developers in an attempt to compete with Foursquare, though it might be quite behind as Foursquare has already been offering a 5,000 call limit prior to approval of third-party apps.

In its blog post, the company also revealed that it now has 50 million users, and that more than three quarters of them have downloaded Swarm.