The Magazine

Foursquare’s hidden gem: the feeds page

5

on May 7th, 2012

Foursquare’s history page hides one of the service’s hidden gems: the feeds page. It provides three feeds of all your check-ins in standard internet formats, making it easy to integrate foursquare with all sorts of other tools.

The feeds date to a time before developers were building applications on the foursquare API, which makes it easier and more secure to connect applications to your foursquare check-in data. They’re still available, though, because not every application has integrated with foursquare.

You’ll find the feeds in the lower right-hand corner of the foursquare history page behind the “RSS/ICS/KML” link (on the previous history page it appeared as just an RSS icon). The link to each feed includes a secret key that gives applications access to your check-ins. Be sure to keep this private, because anyone who has your secret key essentially has access to all your check-ins, both in the past and the future.

Here are a few examples of things you can do with the feeds:

By default, the RSS and KML feeds include the 25 most recent check-ins, but you can add “?count=1000″ (or any other number) to the URL to fetch more.

What creative ways have you come up with to use the feeds foursquare provides?

  • Eric Stumpf

    I can’t find it. I went to the History section. On the lower right is “Show me check-ins,” the below that “In this place,” then “with this person,” and then “In this category.” Nothing about “RSS/CSV/KML.” Am I in the wrong location?

    • Chris Thompson

      The RSS/CSV/KML link should be below all that, at the very bottom of that column.

  • Eric Stumpf

    Not on my page.

  • Eric Stumpf

    I figured it out. I reduce the size of the screen (control and the “-” key) and there it was at the bottom. Now I need reading glasses.

    • Chris Thompson

      Ahhh, strange. Glad you found it!

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