Foursquare emerged on the scene back in 2009 giving users the ability to declare their location by “checking-in” to a location. Since then it has amassed millions of users and billions of data points. The landscape has shifted since 2009 though and Foursquare can’t simply survive with this in the long term. The company is certainly aware of this. CEO Dennis Crowley has revealed today that Foursquare is going to breakup into two separate apps as the company looks to establish itself as much more than an “awesome check-in button.”
The new app is called Swarm and it will exist alongside the official Foursquare app which will be built from the ground up once again. Swarm is essentially a “social heat map,” allowing users to check-in to a location and share it as well as locate friends nearby.
What’s interesting is Crowley and Co. take Foursquare forward. The standalone Foursquare app will continue to exist though it will morph into a bona fide Yelp rival. It won’t have check-in features instead the completely rewritten application will focus primarily on exploration and discovery of places around a user’s location.
Despite revealing the company’s intentions, none of the two new applications are available for download today. Both Swarm and the new Foursquare application will be released over the next few weeks.
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