In my opinion, the gamification was getting kind of old, especially as a lot of people had third-party apps that would check them into any location they even passed by. This probably made it very difficult to monetize location data, but it also made Foursquare less reliable for me when I want to know if my friends have actually been to a place.
I quite like the new Foursquare app, and never use other services like Yelp or Urban Spoon anymore. I see new places pop up on Foursquare before they're on Google Maps all of the time.
On the other hand, Swarm is a dull replacement of the gaming side of things. I find the design too "bubbly" almost childish. I do like that it is very easy for me to rate a place I've been, but I'm not very clear on how those ratings work with the ratings in the Foursquare app (which are much more in-depth).
Yeah, I noticed recently that I was automatically checked in to a bunch of places I haven't actually been, and I can't seem to find any setting to turn it off except for "disable background location data" which seems like it might be what triggers it. We will see if it actually stops, though.
I quite like the new Foursquare app, and never use other services like Yelp or Urban Spoon anymore. I see new places pop up on Foursquare before they're on Google Maps all of the time.
On the other hand, Swarm is a dull replacement of the gaming side of things. I find the design too "bubbly" almost childish. I do like that it is very easy for me to rate a place I've been, but I'm not very clear on how those ratings work with the ratings in the Foursquare app (which are much more in-depth).