Foursquare delivers an early Christmas present: photos and comments
This morning foursquare sent all their iPhone users an early Christmas present: integrated photos and comments. The gifts come wrapped in version 2.2 of the foursquare app for iPhone, now available for download in the app store.
Photos and comments bring a new dimension to the foursquare experience. They turn your history page into a sort of “digital scrapbook,” where you can see the places you’ve been, who you’ve been with and the photos and comments left by you and your friends.
Both serve to improve the social aspect of foursquare and increase user engagement in both the apps and the website. Instead of posting your comments to Facebook and Twitter — for the roughly 20% of checkins pushed to those services — you can now comment directly on every checkin your friends make. Your friends can show you the things they’re eating, seeing and doing in ways you could never really get through a shout or tip.
Photos can be posted in three different ways, each serving a different purpose:
- With your checkin — These photos are only seen by you and your friends, and the social networks where you send your checkins (i.e., Facebook and Twitter). It’s a great way to share a group photo or something interesting you see at the venue, for instance.
- As part of a tip — Tips at restaurants take on a new meaning when you can see the foods people recommend before placing your order. These can be seen by everyone.
- Directly on the venue page — These are good for general photos of the venue. Again, they can be seen by everyone.
You can comment on checkins directly in the app and on the foursquare website. You could leave a comment on a friend’s checkin about something they should try or that you’re nearby and they should swing by to meet up. Your comments are only viewable by you and your foursquare friends (and any comments you leave on friends’ checkins are visible to their friends, as well).
Comments are “a way to engage with your friends in real time,” Alex Rainert, foursquare’s Head of Product, tells us. “Whether it’s ‘I see that you just checked in at a restaurant that I like, here’s a burger that’s not on the menu’ or ‘you’re at this art gallery, make sure you go see this piece,’ or ‘I see that you checked in at the gym after we were out last night.’ It starts a conversation that way. It lets people engage in more real time situations.”
Foursquare says they have some additional features in the works, including exporting photos to Facebook and Flickr, an easier way to track the comments you receive and a photo album where you’ll be able to store your old photos. Several apps that let you tag photos to a foursquare location — like PicPlz and Foodspotting — have already begun work on integrating their photos into foursquare checkins, tips and venue pages. The Instagram update posted yesterday already includes the photo with your checkin. UPDATE (9:20 am): PicPlz (both iPhone and Android) and FoodSpotting are both uploading photos live as of today.
Comments and photos will be making their way to the Android app later this week and the WebOS app by early next year. The Blackberry app will be updated to include them in January and foursquare will be working with their third-party developers to get the rest of the apps (namely Ovi/Nokia and Windows Phone 7) in early 2011.
The new iPhone app is based on version 2 of the foursquare API, so it includes the features that came to Android two weeks ago, such as faster response times, the new Trophy Case and the checkin source field. It also shows popular tips after you checkin, whether they’re from your friends or not.
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not available in the Austrian App Store yet
I just checked the US App Store – version 2.1.1 is the only one there. I guess I’ll check later in the day…
It took a few minutes to propagate through the store. It’s available now.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Taking on Facebook on their own turf. That’s what I’ve wanted to see from Foursquare for months.
I likey. A lot. Any ETA on the Droid app?
On Twitter, they announced later this week. Blackberry in January. They’re working on the build with other developers.
It’s about time they consider the “report spam” function, just in case…
Anybody who wastes my time with insipid comments like “try the burger” is asking to be throat-punched. If I want to know what you like to eat, I’ll ask you.
Haha… I’m still trying to figure out if these are things that will be useful at all to me. But similar to this, I see more room for abuse and annoyance than actual utility… so far anyway.
From what I’ve seen on Foursquare (and Brightkite, Gowalla, Whrrl, and Facebook), most people don’t even bother adding a message to their own checkins. I can’t imagine this feature will be used as much as Foursquare thinks it will be. I’d rather they spent their time on something more urgent, like dealing with spam and cheaters. It was an inability to handle bad users that helped cripple Brightkite.
The spike in activity on Foursquare.com they say they’re experiencing would already say that you’re wrong. A lot of this is photos, I’m sure. But comments are going to catch on like wildfire soon. I’d be willing to put money on it.
Also, just because people don’t post shouts doesn’t mean they have no reason to respond to other people’s check-ins. It’s the location that’s interesting to a lot of people, not the shout. I post shouts to entertain myself, to be honest.
There’s a lot of people who don’t use the app at all to check where their friends are, sure. But even those would probably be more likely to do so after the first time they get an e-mail from someone responding.
Unless they want to put some numbers behind those words, it’s just hype. Foursquare is not the perfect reporter of itself. If it were, Foursquare would have private venues, events, a tips manager, and better anti-cheating code.
Fair enough. Though the photo numbers seem to be immense (if the photo a second they’re claiming is true). Thusfar, however, there doesn’t seem to be much usage of the comments.
So far, the only comment I’ve left on a checkin was to tell @4sqexpert that “Lunar Eclipse” was a bullshit venue.
I may have to moderate my response to the commenting feature. Any feature that gives me a new way to tell people they’re wrong can’t be all bad.
See, look. There’s good in everything.
I did notice more of my friends leaving shouts today than a few days ago. That’s purely anecdotal though. I still thing that once people start leaving comments, it’s a pay it forward kind of thing.
The Android app has just been released in the Market. You’d have to manually update it..
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