Foursquare rolls out mobile Explore updates for iPhone and Android

Foursquare has just updated both the iPhone and Android versions of their apps with the most significant revisions yet to the Explore feature. It now incorporates many of the same search and filtering functions found on the desktop version released last month.

Users are no longer stuck searching just their immediate vicinity. A map view lets users search any particular area (pro tip: zoom in and out to adjust the search radius) for recommendations, making it much more useful for planning something in a different part of town.

The same filters that appeared in the desktop version are also now available on mobile. Users can eliminate places they’ve been before or limit the results just to places their friends have been.

Some of the other niceties that have made their way to the apps include price ranges and photos in the Explore listings. Tap through to the venue details and foursquare will tell you exactly why it thinks you should visit a place. Foursquare’s blog post says menus should now be available on iPhone, but I have yet to find any, even for places that clearly show them on the website.

Instead of one-size-fits-all suggestions, Foursquare’s recommendations are personalized for each user, based on the places they’ve been and the places their friends have been, along with the tastes and preferences foursquare has gleaned from the other 1.5 billion check-ins they’ve processed. Users can search for specific words (like “breakfast tacos”) to find targeted recommendations if they’re in the mood for something special.

These updates bring the mobile platform up to par with the desktop version of Explore, so there’s nothing revolutionary, but it does make Explore more useful since some of its best features are no longer tied to the computer.

What do you think of the updates?