foursquare rolled out version 3.0 last night. Dennis and the team have a terrific post that explains all that is new and different. While I am excited about the new leaderboards and specials 2.0, I am most looking forward to the broad availability of recommendations.
The idea is pretty simple: tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll help you find something nearby. The suggestions are based on a little bit of everything – the places you’ve been, the places your friends have visited, your loyalty to your favorite places, the categories and types of places you gravitate towards, what’s popular with other users, the day of the week, places with great tips, the time of day, and so on.
I know I will personally get huge value out of this. I travel a fair bit and usually don’t have the time to do a lot of research about good places to go to.
There is a second reason though I am looking forward to recommendations. As an investor it is incredibly gratifying to see a team being able to realize the vision that got them excited about building something in the first place. This is just the first version of recommendations and there will have to be lots of learning and tweaking. But it does complete the circle that Dennis had in mind from the beginning: check-ins generate data that can power recommendations which in turn provides an incentive for checking in.
Congratulations to team foursquare on getting version 3.0 out!
