Foursquare 3.0 Aims to 'Make Cities Easier to Use': CEO
Exactly two years after its start, Foursquare on Wednesday launched version 3.0 of its app, which lets users do much more than just "check in" to their favorite places.
Foursquare 3.0, according to Co-Founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, now gives users personalized recommendations for places to go.
"We had almost half a billion check-ins in the last year and now we're taking all this information and recycling it and giving it back to users," he told FOX Business in an interview.
If you like coffee shops, for example, the app will tell you which coffee shops you'll like in another city, he said.
Crowley also spoke about the people at Foursquare putting the software product together. Crowley said the company is hiring all the time and bringing in great people, to the point now where he says it has "just the right people and just the right amount of users, just the right amount of information to make a lot of this stuff happen."
The company, which has 7.5 million users, is not yet turning a profit, Crowley said. But it's launching a new platform of better tools for local merchants to build loyalty programs, as a model to make money.
Foursquare calls itself "a location-based mobile platform that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. By 'checking in' via a smartphone app or SMS, users share their location with friends while collecting points and virtual badges."