Wahili: a foursquare-based recommendation app for non-foursquare users

Do you ever feel like you’re getting into a rut? Going to the same bars and restaurants over and over again? Maybe it’s time to venture out and try something new. That’s the principle behind Wahili, a new iPhone app that aims to help you find new places to try based on your favorites.

You tell Wahili which places are your favorites (by searching foursquare venues) and it returns a list of suggestions using foursquare’s new “similar venues” API. The venues it lists tend to be very accurate since they’re based off the same data foursquare uses to power Explore.

Wahili is using the foursquare API, but it’s clearly aimed at the non-foursquare crowd as a simple way to introduce some basic recommendations without the need to sign up for an account. Foursquare users, of course, can tap the Explore tab for instantaneous recommendations based on their past checkins. Plus, Wahili doesn’t interface with your foursquare account to help find your favorite venues automatically.

It’s one of the first apps to use foursquare’s powerful recommendation features in a way that doesn’t require a foursquare account. That opens it up to a whole new set of users who might view foursquare as just a check-in app, but might be willing to get a few basic recommendations of some new places to try. In some ways, it’s what I expect foursquare to focus on in 2012 — a recommendations app where accounts (and checkins) are optional.