One of the biggest complaints about foursquare’s tips has been that they get cluttered up with useless tips, making it difficult to find the ones that are really useful. Today, foursquare has fixed that by sorting their tips by popularity.
Each tip now has a number next to the date that lets you know how many people have done that tip. By default, the tips on each venue and user profile are sorted by popularity, but you can still sort by the old “recent” view, as well. For any tip that you’ve marked as a to-do, the corner gets “turned down” to let you know you’ve marked it.
Tips are also sorted by popularity on branded profiles, making it easy to see their best ones. And instead of just 50 tips per profile, you can now see them all by going through the pages at the bottom of the list. The History Channel profile, for instance offers almost 400 tips across 8 pages.
In addition, the word “Link” has been changed to “More Info,” which makes it a little easier to understand what the link feature is used for.
Overall this is a great update to foursquare’s tip system that should help users find the useful tips much more easily.
UPDATE: Foursquare spokesperson Erin Gleason has confirmed that they “will be rolling out tip sorting functionality in the apps soon.”
#1 by ack154 on August 12, 2010 - 2:20 pm
This is pretty nice to highlight some of the decent tips people leave (as opposed to some of the crap I’ve seen).
Sadly no one else in my area seems to use Tips at all. I’m pretty sure I’m one of the very few people who has left any of the tips around me…
#2 by jlovely on August 12, 2010 - 2:39 pm
Nice… and now I noticed that people have actually liked my tips and tried them out.
Now if only SUs can delete spam tips..that would be fabulous.
#3 by Spam on August 12, 2010 - 2:44 pm
I love the change, although I do see a downside: Now that the most popular tips appear first, newly-added ones will struggle to be noticed, especially on venues with many tips.
#4 by Spam on August 12, 2010 - 2:46 pm
And yes, I know the “RECENT” button is there for that reason, but most users aren’t likely to re-sort the list unless they’re spending some quality time with the venue page.
Still, as I said in the start, a great change.
#5 by Michael on August 12, 2010 - 4:01 pm
Not so sure. A lot of power users know how quickly restaurant, bars, etc. change their specials, menus, etc. I know many of my friends sort by most recent on Yelp as almost a default once they click on the page just so they don’t get outdated info. But, the same thought definitely crossed my mind.