IMAGE: ERIC PIERMONT/AFP
Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley spoke on stage for the first time since the company's major announcement that it will split the app into two. "At first, we thought it was crazy to do this, but it makes total sense," he said.
During the New York Ideas conference in Manhattan on Tuesday, Crowley explained the initial apprehension about the split.
Last week, Foursquare announced it would launch a new app called Swarm for staying in touch with friends (and would focus on its signature check-in feature), and use the original Foursquare app for discovery. Swarm will launch next week, while the new Foursquare app will roll out over the summer, Crowley added.
"I wouldn't say we are deemphasizing the check-in," Crowley said."I wouldn't say we are deemphasizing the check-in," Crowley said. "We have gotten really good at making proactive recommendations, search and knowing where friends are (check-in), but we've turned into a swiss army knife type of product. We believe that the best apps out there are the ones with a single-case use that can be described in a sentence or tweet."
By simplifying the company's services, Crowley said each of the apps will be "much faster and easier to use."
Foursquare wants to place more emphasis on personalization and take the user's tastes into account, as well as opinions of trusted friends and experts.
"A lot of the stuff we are trying to build at Foursquare doesn't exist," he said. "One of the things that drives me nuts about searches is that if people do a search for a local restaurant nearby, everyone gets the same results — that seems so broken to me. We all have different tastes, friends and preferences, and no one has done personalized search like this in the real world yet."
Typically, local search is limited to answering your questions, but Foursquare is trying to add little touches that customize the experience.
"What if the phone was contextually aware of what you see on the street and where you were in a certain neighborhood or city?" Crowley asked. "You walk into a bar and get a pop up that your friend was here two weeks ago and they had the best dessert they've ever had in their life here, so you know you should get it."
Crowley also discussed growing Foursquare's business over the years.
"It's a lot harder than I thought it was," he said. "We thought we would have 10 employees and now we have more than 170. It's taught us all about how hard this can be and how patient you have to be for technology and the critical mass of people to catch up with concepts. It's more of a marathon than a sprint."
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