Foursquare Splits To Take On Yelp

InformationWeek reports that check-in app Foursquare is splitting into two pieces. One of them -- the part that will retain the Foursquare name -- is actually losing the original check-in functionality, in favor of local reviews and recommendations; a second app called Swarm will get the who's-where-right-now part of the Foursquare functionality. From the article: "Foursquare isn't the first company to unbundle its features into new apps. Last month, Facebook announced that it will separate in-app messaging from its official iOS and Android apps and require users to download Messenger to chat with friends. Users will have two weeks to download Messenger before the service in the main Facebook app disappears, the company said. ... Foursquare's changes also aim to capitalize on a mobile app trend: Taking online friendships offline to meet up in person. Most recently, Facebook announced its opt-in Nearby Friends feature, which will display your friends' locations on a map and track, store, and share your location with others."

Comments

Unbundling seems like an odd fad

[DavidinAla]

While I don't want an "everything including the kitchen sink" app, the idea that functions should be broken into separate apps seems like an odd (and insane) fad to me. If the functions are related, they belong in the same app. If they're not related, why were they ever designed into the same app? For instance, in Facebook, the messaging app is for messaging people I'm connected to on Facebook. I don't want it for anything else and I'm not going to make that messaging system into my primary messaging system. It will ONLY be for communication with people I don't know well enough to be connected by email. It just seems as though folks in Silicon Valley talk to each other and somebody came up with the idea that functions should be different apps, so many companies are doing it with no rational reason behind it.

that order kind of makes sense

[Trepidity]

If you're going to unbundle them (no idea if this is a good idea, but say you already decided that), it makes sense to make the already-installed one be the reviews/etc. thing, and the new app be the check-in thing. You can probably get existing Foursquare users to install a new check-in app, because that's the functionality they came for in the first place. But if you kept check-in in the existing app and created a new reviews app as a Yelp competitor, it'd be harder to get any installs.

Hence it makes sense to move the thing people actually want out of the existing app, though that initially seems counterintuitive.

History repeats itself

[Brian Kendig]

"One of them ... is actually losing the original check-in functionality, in favor of local reviews and recommendations..."

Because this worked *so* well for Gowalla.