Foursquare’s Radar to bring real-time serendipity
Ever since the very beginning, foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has spoken of his service as a way to “manufacture” real-time serendipity. He’s wanted to make it possible to notify you when you pass a restaurant on your to-do list or when friends are gathering nearby. With the launch of foursquare Radar those dreams are finally set to become reality.
Using new location features found only in iOS 5, Radar is able to notify you, for example, when you’re close to a place that’s either on your to-do list or another list you follow or when three or more friends have checked in to a nearby venue. It’s powered by their Explore algorithm, so you’ll be sure to get notifications that are relevant to you.
Once you enable Radar, notifications will pop up on your phone whether the app is open or not. Foursquare v4.0 is already available in the app store, but the new Radar features require iOS 5, which is set to be released later today. Foursquare plans to bring it to other platforms in the future.
This is a big step for foursquare, because it takes it from a sharing and on-demand recommendations app to an app that’s able to push recommendations to your when they’re most relevant. No other app is able to offer that kind of location-based immediacy, suddenly putting foursquare well ahead of competitors like Yelp, Ness, Google Places, etc.
Once you get iOS 5, give Radar a try and let us know what you think in the comments.
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Does it take time into consideration? It would be great if it recommended bars that were popular in the evenings when I went past in the evening, instead of at another time of day.
How do you enable radar?
Top left corner of your friends tab, circle radar icon
Am I to understand that the “Radar” functionnality works only on iPhones ?
Not ipods, not iPads… (?)
seems like it.
Very curious if this will alert you to specials that come from brands you follow too. Seems like a great new opportunity to discover…
Nevermind got it. XD It killed my battery so fast! The little location service is always on as long as I have radar on. :/ Probably won’t be using it unless I’m somewhere new.
I think it depends how much you move around. I left mine on all night and the battery only dropped 3%, but driving to the office and sitting here this morning have eaten another 10% roughly.
Looks like Radar is not compatible with the iPhone 3GS, or at least MY iPhone 3GS… has anyone else been able to get it to work?
It’s for iPhone 4 and 4S only. The 3GS doesn’t support the location functions they need to make Radar work.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Wow, I’m really glad that foursquare uses the iPhone as a beta so us Android users get a good and finished product 2 weeks later. Or something like that.
There are far too many reminders. If it was limited just to nearby places on my ‘to do’ list it might be useful.
But kills the battery super quick when moving around London.
This is pretty annoying when you are sitting at home. No, I don’t want to check in at the apartment building down the block I chose not to live at.
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It killed my battery so had to turn it off…
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