Foursquare today announced it would be unbundling its location-based service into two separate mobile apps; one will be called Swarm, while the other retains the original Foursquare branding.
The idea is to break its business in half. Foursquare started out as a check-in app, allowing you to easily broadcast your location to friends and family. This will continue to exist under Swarm, a new Android and iOS app due in the coming weeks. A version for Windows Phone will follow shortly afterwards.
Snapchat and Foursquare have entered into a partnership to power location-based geofilters and enable more targeted advertising.
"Foursquare is not a consumer social app business, it’s a data company. And only when it admitted that to itself and revalued as such was it able to pull in more capital and keep chugging. Today at LA’s Upfront Summit, Foursquare’s lead investor from Union Square Ventures Fred Wilson stuck up for the startup while trying to make people understand how it’s changed."
Team communication app Slack has hired Foursquare executive Noah Weiss to head up a new Search, Learning, & Intelligence Group for Slack, which will be part of the well-funded startup's new New York office.
