Foursquare Explore makes all those check-ins totally worth it.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Foursquare Explore makes all those check-ins totally worth it.

So I’ve been using Foursquare since it launched at SXSW many years ago. While its cool to get mayorships, badges, and even see where my friends are, those alone make Foursquare really marginally useful. There aren’t even that many check-in specials to make things super exciting. (I <3 free stuff.)

Despite all of this, I’ve continued to check-in on Foursquare. I knew it’d lead to something bigger than what we’ve had thus far. A lot of my friends have thought I was crazy for continuing with Foursquare. It all made sense on a trip to NYC this last weekend.

My wife and I were headed to NYC. She had a work event that she was attending. We found a place on AirBnb in Brooklyn. While I’ve been to Brooklyn, I’ve never really spent that much time there. I don’t know any of the cool spots to hang out, grab a beer, or get coffee.

Enter Foursquare Explore.

I was able to pull Foursquare’s Explore tab, tell it what I wanted lunch or a latte, and it’d tell me the cool places to go. It’d be the places that people like me would go, where my friends have been, or just popular spots. For the most part it was pretty dead on.

One day we were looking for lunch. We found a sandwich shop that looked interesting but you could have easily blinked and walked right by it. I looked at Foursquare Explore and it popped right up. Everyone said we should absolutely go there. So we went and it was epic.

It would have been easy to go where we knew… what felt comfortable. There was a Subway sandwich shop around the corner. You can always find a Starbucks. But with Foursquare Explore, it broke down the barrier and made the city more accessible to us. We were able to find the little jewels. We were able to find the awesome little indy coffee shops.

I can easily see Foursquare Explore replacing Yelp. Yelp is great but it’s lowest common denominator. Guide books that you get at Barnes & Noble are also very lowest common denominator. Foursquare Explore is really built around what I want.

I can also see people using Foursquare Explore without actually checking in. You’ll just be able to consume the recommendations. I’d imagine they’ll make it even more prominent in the UI of the app.

Congrats to Foursqare! I get it. This is a thing.