A few weeks back Foursquare announced that the company is splitting it’s service in two – Swarm for check-ins, Foursquare for discovering new places. And now, Swarm for Android and iOS is here.
Taking a first look at Swarm, I should say that Foursquare has worked really good at keeping this app simple and more focused on what is to be done – check-ins, rather than putting everything together like in the previous Foursquare app. The Foursquare app is still the same for now. But, in the near future, Foursquare will be working on making Foursquare app more focused on discovering places and will remove check-ins option soon.
Getting back to Swarm, you get to login with Facebook, Foursquare or sign up with your email ID. Once you are in, you will be introduced to ‘Neighborhoods’ and ‘Swarm Planning’.
Neighborhoods basically displays where your friends are. Unlike Foursquare, Swarm shows the location of your friends even if they haven’t checked in at a place. It scans their location signals and beams you their location. Still, Foursquare gives you options to stop this Neighborhood feature to stop beaming your location to your friends.
The next section shows the list of your friends’ check-ins. You can favorite those check-ins or drop in comments.
And, here’s another new feature – Swarm Planning. You can Create a plan and your friends can vote I’m interested or create a discussion right there. A built-in group messaging section makes this possible. This way, you can create plans and discuss with your friends before actually executing them. Planning to go to the movies this weekend? Swarm Planning will help you work out things with your friends.
And the last section shows notifications to you just like notifications on the previous Foursquare app.
Talking about Mayorships and Badges, they are not available on Swarm. It looks like Foursquare will be retaining those in the Foursquare app and not port those to Swarm.
So, Swarm is an app that looks good only if have lots of friends on Foursquare. If you do not have much friends or live in remote areas, the app is useless. Swarm is all about beaming your friends’ location to you. If you are more into discovering new places, Foursquare app is the one for you.
If you haven’t downloaded Swarm yet, you can get the app at your respective app markets with the links below.
Link : Swarm on Android | Swarm for iOS