An era of one of the App Store’s early success stories is over. Foursquare is shutting down its flagship city guide app as it “focuses on building an even better experience with Swarm,” the company said in an update. The app will be shut down on December 15, but the web version will remain online until “early 2025.”
The closure is a notable reversal of the company’s controversial strategy announced a decade ago to split its famous and controversial “check-in” service into a separate app. The app became known as Swarm, and the Foursquare-branded app became a “city guide” filled with user-generated reviews and local recommendations.
Foursquare says its future is once again checking in. “We’re also introducing exciting new features and capabilities to Swarm throughout the year to unlock new use cases that can better support our customers’ needs (👀 Some of these may look familiar) ),” the company said, adding that it has also added additional updates expected “early next year.”
It’s unclear why the company would change its strategy to push Swarm above its namesake app. The company laid off more than 100 employees earlier this year to “streamline” its operations. Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s founder and current co-chair of the company’s board of directors, said in a Threads post that the company is “doing well,” but expressed disappointment with the news. “I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that this news has been really frustrating for me the last few days,” he wrote.
