Location based social networkers have a new treat this morning in the form of Foursquare 5.0. The latest update hit the App Store late last night, and brings with it a dramatically re-done user interface (which looks a lot cleaner) as well as a few new features, and for course, some performance improvements, too.
The main timeline feed/friends tab takes a Facebook Timeline-esque approach to displaying friends’ activity. In our opinion, it looks nicer and much sleeker. At the same time, we can see someone calling thew new design too “busy”. The “Explore” tab brings up a list of local points of interest as well as highlighting deals going on in the area around you. Finally, the “Profile” tab gets completely redone, showing your profile image, linked accounts/services and stats/photos/friends/badges up top, and recent checkin-ins underneath.
At any point in the app, checking in somewhere is as easy as hitting the check-in button in the top right corner. Speaking of checkin-ins, we’ll note that the new check-in page is considerably more information dense as it includes a shrunken down map similar to the one found in the “Explore” section. In this shrunken map, recent check-ins will be displayed. Underneath the map, a list of nearby locations is presented in a fashion pretty much identical to previous versions of the app. Finally, the actual check-in page for an individual location has been re-designed to put a big focus on commenting and photo sharing. Social share buttons (if enabled via connected accounts) wil display in the bottom right.
Last but not least, Notifications, are located on the top left of the main header next to the always-present check-in button.
One oddity we noticed is that once highly touted “Radar” feature which ran in the background and alerted you to nearby tips, friends or deals has been removed from the main page and buried several pages deep. Perhaps it was an experimental feature that Foursquare once had great plans for but has since been put on the back-burner?
Overall, we’d say the Foursquare team did a great job with Foursquare 5.0. While our small town isn’t exactly the most exciting place to use apps like Foursquare, it is good enough nonetheless to make us want to use it. And that’s half the battle. Give the new app a go and let us know what you think!
Update: Android version now live in Play Store.
- Foursquare 5.0 for iOS – Download (iTunes Link)
- Android – Download (Google Play Store Link)
