Image: © sharafmaksumov/Stock.adobe.com
The app’s closure is scheduled for 15 December 2024, with the web version soon to follow.
Foursquare, the geolocation tech company, is sunsetting its signature City Guide app, which helped users explore cities with personalised recommendations.
The local discovery app will be available to users on mobile until 15 December 2024. The web version will also be shut down later, but will continue to be accessible until early 2025.
The company said it has made the decision in order to focus its efforts on building better experiences in its other product, Swarm – a check-in app that allows users to share their locations with their friends and create a record of their experiences.
“We are deeply grateful for your loyalty and support over the years. This decision was not made lightly, but it is a necessary step to prioritise key initiatives that we believe will have a greater impact and better serve our customers,” the company said.
In a post on Threads, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley said he has “been in a real funk these last few days” over the news of the shutdown. “I have a really good blog post somewhere in me about ‘the danger of falling in love with the companies you build and products you create’, but it’s not the right time to write it.”
Business listings on the City Guide app also appear on Swarm. The company said businesses will remain discoverable on the Swarm app and gives users instructions on how to export, download and delete their data from the City Guide.
Foursquare was launched in 2009, four years after Google Maps burst onto the scene. It began as a check-in app and became a way for users to see tips and to-dos about various locations. By 2012, the app opted for a redesign and added an ‘explore’ function that allowed users to browse locations for various search terms.
However, in 2014, the company opted to split its well-known check-in service into a separate app, known as Swarm, leaving the Foursquare-branded app as a ‘City Guide’, full of user-generated reviews and local recommendations.
At the time, Crowley told The Verge that the evolution of mobile usage was what prompted the unbundling. “As mobile usage has broadened and evolved, you get individual experiences instead. You open an app to do a specific task and not as a gateway to a large, complicated experience.”
Now, it seems the company has done a full circle back to its roots, opting to kill its namesake app in favour of the Swarm app, which is home to those original check-in capabilities from 15 years ago.
The news comes a few months after the company announced it was laying off more than 100 employees. However, Crowley said the company is “doing fine” with more than $100m in revenue.
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