#foursquare — Public Fediverse posts

Zest Maps Is the AI-Powered ‘Spiritual Successor to Foursquare’

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.wired.com/story/zest-maps-is-the-second-coming-of-foursquare/

Zest Maps Is the AI-Powered ‘Spiritual Successor to Foursquare’

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.wired.com/story/zest-maps-is-the-second-coming-of-foursquare/

Zest Maps Is the AI-Powered ‘Spiritual Successor to Foursquare’

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.wired.com/story/zest-maps-is-the-second-coming-of-foursquare/

Zest Maps Is the AI-Powered ‘Spiritual Successor to Foursquare’

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.wired.com/story/zest-maps-is-the-second-coming-of-foursquare/

Zest Maps Is the AI-Powered ‘Spiritual Successor to Foursquare’

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.wired.com/story/zest-maps-is-the-second-coming-of-foursquare/

🆕 blog! “Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?”

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/04/why-is-it-so-hard-to-passively-stalk-my-friends-locations/
⸻
#FourSquare #geolocation #location

🆕 blog! “Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?”

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/04/why-is-it-so-hard-to-passively-stalk-my-friends-locations/
⸻
#FourSquare #geolocation #location

🆕 blog! “Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?”

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/04/why-is-it-so-hard-to-passively-stalk-my-friends-locations/
⸻
#FourSquare #geolocation #location

🆕 blog! “Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?”

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/04/why-is-it-so-hard-to-passively-stalk-my-friends-locations/
⸻
#FourSquare #geolocation #location

🆕 blog! “Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?”

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/04/why-is-it-so-hard-to-passively-stalk-my-friends-locations/
⸻
#FourSquare #geolocation #location

Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known you were here, we could have had dinner together last night!"

I do enjoy the serendipity of events like FOSDEM - randomly seeing a mate and expressing the joy of spontaneity. But I also like arranging to meet up in advance.

At the moment, my strategy is sending a blast on social media saying "I'm visiting [this city] next week, anyone fancy a beer and a natter?" I've met friends all over Europe, Australia, and New Zealand that way. It mostly works. But I can't help feeling it is inefficient and prone to missing connections.

I even wrote my own code to auto-post FourSquare checkins to my other social media sites.

Here are my ideal scenarios. Imagine something built in to Signal / WhatsApp / Whatever app you already use.

Plan In Advance

I tell my app that I'm going to Barcelona from 14th - 19th February and am happy to meet any of my friends.

✨Background Magic✨

My friend Alice has also planned a trip to Barcelona around those dates. She gets a ping saying that one of her friends is going to be in the same city. Does she want to know more?

So far, so Dopplr.

My friend Bob lives just outside of Barcelona. He's set his "willing to travel" settings to be about 30 minutes, so also receives a ping.

I don't know that either of them have seen the notification until they decide they want to meet.

Spontaneous Fun

I step off the train in Manchester, England England. Perhaps the app notices I'm away from home, or maybe I press the "Anyone Around?" button.

On a map I can see friends who have shared their rough location. I decide to message Chuck to see if he's free for a chat.

Dave notices my location is now within his preferred travel distance. He gives me a ring.

A bit like how FourSquare used to be - but with less precision.

Downsides

The above is very much the "happy path". It doesn't look at any of the knotty problems or grapple with the UI that would be needed to make this work. But we know the technology for sharing location is viable - so what are the social issues that make this so difficult?

Social Awkwardness

"Oh, fuck, Edgar's location says he's in town. Can we pretend to be out of the country?"

Alternatively, "Huh, I know at least a dozen people who live in Skegness. Why aren't any of them responding to me?"

Social pressure and awkwardness are hard problems. No one wants to use the app that makes you feel like a friendless loser.

Privacy

Do you want your friends knowing your every movement? I'm sure some people do, but most probably don't. It's possible to sketch out some vague controls:

• Only send a notification if I push this button.
• Don't send alerts if I am within this radius of my home / work.
• Fuzz my location to the city / state / country level.

Danger

Is it a risk to let people know vaguely where you are? Is meeting up with (semi-) strangers from the Internet a smart life choice? Is having an app stalk you across the globe giving too much data to advertisers?

Does that creep from work abuse the system to keep popping up whenever you're out with friends?

Technology

I said the technology exists for this, and that was sort of true. Every device has GPS & an Internet connection. Storing a log of friends and sending them a message is a solved problem.

But is it solved in a decentralised and privacy preserving way?

No one wants to give all this power to one company. Google will build it and kill it. Facebook will sell your secrets to dropshippers. A funky start-up will be acquhired by Apple & restricted to iOS devices.

My location is fuzzed to an acceptable degree of imprecision and then sent… where? To all my friends directly? To a central server? Can k-anonymity help?

Is this a separate app? Everyone seemed to leave FourSquare after they buggered around with it. Perhaps it is just a feature in existing apps?

What's Already There?

Messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp allow you to share your location with one or more friends.

To me, it feels a bit weird to manually send a dropped pin to some / all of my contact. It also doesn't let you share "tomorrow I will be in…"

Using "Stories" is the common way to share an update with all contacts - but none of them let you automatically share your location in a story.

FourSquare's Swarm app allows you to check in to a "neighbourhood". But there's no obvious way of saying "London" or "Manchester" - and I'm not sure how close to an area you need to be to get an alert that your friend is there.

What's Next?

I don't want to build this. Trying to get everyone I know to adopt a new app isn't going to happen. With the fragmentation of messaging and the lack of interoperability, this is likely to remain an unsolved problem for some time.

So here's my strategy.

• Get back in to using FourSquare. Most of my friends seemed to stop using it back in 2017 when it was split into Swarm. But a few are still on there.
• Manually post a story on Mastodon, BlueSky, Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram saying "Visiting Hamburg next week. Anyone want a beer?"
• Hope that something better comes along.

Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known you were here, we could have had dinner together last night!"

I do enjoy the serendipity of events like FOSDEM - randomly seeing a mate and expressing the joy of spontaneity. But I also like arranging to meet up in advance.

At the moment, my strategy is sending a blast on social media saying "I'm visiting [this city] next week, anyone fancy a beer and a natter?" I've met friends all over Europe, Australia, and New Zealand that way. It mostly works. But I can't help feeling it is inefficient and prone to missing connections.

I even wrote my own code to auto-post FourSquare checkins to my other social media sites.

Here are my ideal scenarios. Imagine something built in to Signal / WhatsApp / Whatever app you already use.

Plan In Advance

I tell my app that I'm going to Barcelona from 14th - 19th February and am happy to meet any of my friends.

✨Background Magic✨

My friend Alice has also planned a trip to Barcelona around those dates. She gets a ping saying that one of her friends is going to be in the same city. Does she want to know more?

So far, so Dopplr.

My friend Bob lives just outside of Barcelona. He's set his "willing to travel" settings to be about 30 minutes, so also receives a ping.

I don't know that either of them have seen the notification until they decide they want to meet.

Spontaneous Fun

I step off the train in Manchester, England England. Perhaps the app notices I'm away from home, or maybe I press the "Anyone Around?" button.

On a map I can see friends who have shared their rough location. I decide to message Chuck to see if he's free for a chat.

Dave notices my location is now within his preferred travel distance. He gives me a ring.

A bit like how FourSquare used to be - but with less precision.

Downsides

The above is very much the "happy path". It doesn't look at any of the knotty problems or grapple with the UI that would be needed to make this work. But we know the technology for sharing location is viable - so what are the social issues that make this so difficult?

Social Awkwardness

"Oh, fuck, Edgar's location says he's in town. Can we pretend to be out of the country?"

Alternatively, "Huh, I know at least a dozen people who live in Skegness. Why aren't any of them responding to me?"

Social pressure and awkwardness are hard problems. No one wants to use the app that makes you feel like a friendless loser.

Privacy

Do you want your friends knowing your every movement? I'm sure some people do, but most probably don't. It's possible to sketch out some vague controls:

• Only send a notification if I push this button.
• Don't send alerts if I am within this radius of my home / work.
• Fuzz my location to the city / state / country level.

Danger

Is it a risk to let people know vaguely where you are? Is meeting up with (semi-) strangers from the Internet a smart life choice? Is having an app stalk you across the globe giving too much data to advertisers?

Does that creep from work abuse the system to keep popping up whenever you're out with friends?

Technology

I said the technology exists for this, and that was sort of true. Every device has GPS & an Internet connection. Storing a log of friends and sending them a message is a solved problem.

But is it solved in a decentralised and privacy preserving way?

No one wants to give all this power to one company. Google will build it and kill it. Facebook will sell your secrets to dropshippers. A funky start-up will be acquhired by Apple & restricted to iOS devices.

My location is fuzzed to an acceptable degree of imprecision and then sent… where? To all my friends directly? To a central server? Can k-anonymity help?

Is this a separate app? Everyone seemed to leave FourSquare after they buggered around with it. Perhaps it is just a feature in existing apps?

What's Already There?

Messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp allow you to share your location with one or more friends.

To me, it feels a bit weird to manually send a dropped pin to some / all of my contact. It also doesn't let you share "tomorrow I will be in…"

Using "Stories" is the common way to share an update with all contacts - but none of them let you automatically share your location in a story.

FourSquare's Swarm app allows you to check in to a "neighbourhood". But there's no obvious way of saying "London" or "Manchester" - and I'm not sure how close to an area you need to be to get an alert that your friend is there.

What's Next?

I don't want to build this. Trying to get everyone I know to adopt a new app isn't going to happen. With the fragmentation of messaging and the lack of interoperability, this is likely to remain an unsolved problem for some time.

So here's my strategy.

• Get back in to using FourSquare. Most of my friends seemed to stop using it back in 2017 when it was split into Swarm. But a few are still on there.
• Manually post a story on Mastodon, BlueSky, Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram saying "Visiting Hamburg next week. Anyone want a beer?"
• Hope that something better comes along.

Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known you were here, we could have had dinner together last night!"

I do enjoy the serendipity of events like FOSDEM - randomly seeing a mate and expressing the joy of spontaneity. But I also like arranging to meet up in advance.

At the moment, my strategy is sending a blast on social media saying "I'm visiting [this city] next week, anyone fancy a beer and a natter?" I've met friends all over Europe, Australia, and New Zealand that way. It mostly works. But I can't help feeling it is inefficient and prone to missing connections.

I even wrote my own code to auto-post FourSquare checkins to my other social media sites.

Here are my ideal scenarios. Imagine something built in to Signal / WhatsApp / Whatever app you already use.

Plan In Advance

I tell my app that I'm going to Barcelona from 14th - 19th February and am happy to meet any of my friends.

✨Background Magic✨

My friend Alice has also planned a trip to Barcelona around those dates. She gets a ping saying that one of her friends is going to be in the same city. Does she want to know more?

So far, so Dopplr.

My friend Bob lives just outside of Barcelona. He's set his "willing to travel" settings to be about 30 minutes, so also receives a ping.

I don't know that either of them have seen the notification until they decide they want to meet.

Spontaneous Fun

I step off the train in Manchester, England England. Perhaps the app notices I'm away from home, or maybe I press the "Anyone Around?" button.

On a map I can see friends who have shared their rough location. I decide to message Chuck to see if he's free for a chat.

Dave notices my location is now within his preferred travel distance. He gives me a ring.

A bit like how FourSquare used to be - but with less precision.

Downsides

The above is very much the "happy path". It doesn't look at any of the knotty problems or grapple with the UI that would be needed to make this work. But we know the technology for sharing location is viable - so what are the social issues that make this so difficult?

Social Awkwardness

"Oh, fuck, Edgar's location says he's in town. Can we pretend to be out of the country?"

Alternatively, "Huh, I know at least a dozen people who live in Skegness. Why aren't any of them responding to me?"

Social pressure and awkwardness are hard problems. No one wants to use the app that makes you feel like a friendless loser.

Privacy

Do you want your friends knowing your every movement? I'm sure some people do, but most probably don't. It's possible to sketch out some vague controls:

• Only send a notification if I push this button.
• Don't send alerts if I am within this radius of my home / work.
• Fuzz my location to the city / state / country level.

Danger

Is it a risk to let people know vaguely where you are? Is meeting up with (semi-) strangers from the Internet a smart life choice? Is having an app stalk you across the globe giving too much data to advertisers?

Does that creep from work abuse the system to keep popping up whenever you're out with friends?

Technology

I said the technology exists for this, and that was sort of true. Every device has GPS & an Internet connection. Storing a log of friends and sending them a message is a solved problem.

But is it solved in a decentralised and privacy preserving way?

No one wants to give all this power to one company. Google will build it and kill it. Facebook will sell your secrets to dropshippers. A funky start-up will be acquhired by Apple & restricted to iOS devices.

My location is fuzzed to an acceptable degree of imprecision and then sent… where? To all my friends directly? To a central server? Can k-anonymity help?

Is this a separate app? Everyone seemed to leave FourSquare after they buggered around with it. Perhaps it is just a feature in existing apps?

What's Already There?

Messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp allow you to share your location with one or more friends.

To me, it feels a bit weird to manually send a dropped pin to some / all of my contact. It also doesn't let you share "tomorrow I will be in…"

Using "Stories" is the common way to share an update with all contacts - but none of them let you automatically share your location in a story.

FourSquare's Swarm app allows you to check in to a "neighbourhood". But there's no obvious way of saying "London" or "Manchester" - and I'm not sure how close to an area you need to be to get an alert that your friend is there.

What's Next?

I don't want to build this. Trying to get everyone I know to adopt a new app isn't going to happen. With the fragmentation of messaging and the lack of interoperability, this is likely to remain an unsolved problem for some time.

So here's my strategy.

• Get back in to using FourSquare. Most of my friends seemed to stop using it back in 2017 when it was split into Swarm. But a few are still on there.
• Manually post a story on Mastodon, BlueSky, Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram saying "Visiting Hamburg next week. Anyone want a beer?"
• Hope that something better comes along.

Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known you were here, we could have had dinner together last night!"

I do enjoy the serendipity of events like FOSDEM - randomly seeing a mate and expressing the joy of spontaneity. But I also like arranging to meet up in advance.

At the moment, my strategy is sending a blast on social media saying "I'm visiting [this city] next week, anyone fancy a beer and a natter?" I've met friends all over Europe, Australia, and New Zealand that way. It mostly works. But I can't help feeling it is inefficient and prone to missing connections.

I even wrote my own code to auto-post FourSquare checkins to my other social media sites.

Here are my ideal scenarios. Imagine something built in to Signal / WhatsApp / Whatever app you already use.

Plan In Advance

I tell my app that I'm going to Barcelona from 14th - 19th February and am happy to meet any of my friends.

✨Background Magic✨

My friend Alice has also planned a trip to Barcelona around those dates. She gets a ping saying that one of her friends is going to be in the same city. Does she want to know more?

So far, so Dopplr.

My friend Bob lives just outside of Barcelona. He's set his "willing to travel" settings to be about 30 minutes, so also receives a ping.

I don't know that either of them have seen the notification until they decide they want to meet.

Spontaneous Fun

I step off the train in Manchester, England England. Perhaps the app notices I'm away from home, or maybe I press the "Anyone Around?" button.

On a map I can see friends who have shared their rough location. I decide to message Chuck to see if he's free for a chat.

Dave notices my location is now within his preferred travel distance. He gives me a ring.

A bit like how FourSquare used to be - but with less precision.

Downsides

The above is very much the "happy path". It doesn't look at any of the knotty problems or grapple with the UI that would be needed to make this work. But we know the technology for sharing location is viable - so what are the social issues that make this so difficult?

Social Awkwardness

"Oh, fuck, Edgar's location says he's in town. Can we pretend to be out of the country?"

Alternatively, "Huh, I know at least a dozen people who live in Skegness. Why aren't any of them responding to me?"

Social pressure and awkwardness are hard problems. No one wants to use the app that makes you feel like a friendless loser.

Privacy

Do you want your friends knowing your every movement? I'm sure some people do, but most probably don't. It's possible to sketch out some vague controls:

• Only send a notification if I push this button.
• Don't send alerts if I am within this radius of my home / work.
• Fuzz my location to the city / state / country level.

Danger

Is it a risk to let people know vaguely where you are? Is meeting up with (semi-) strangers from the Internet a smart life choice? Is having an app stalk you across the globe giving too much data to advertisers?

Does that creep from work abuse the system to keep popping up whenever you're out with friends?

Technology

I said the technology exists for this, and that was sort of true. Every device has GPS & an Internet connection. Storing a log of friends and sending them a message is a solved problem.

But is it solved in a decentralised and privacy preserving way?

No one wants to give all this power to one company. Google will build it and kill it. Facebook will sell your secrets to dropshippers. A funky start-up will be acquhired by Apple & restricted to iOS devices.

My location is fuzzed to an acceptable degree of imprecision and then sent… where? To all my friends directly? To a central server? Can k-anonymity help?

Is this a separate app? Everyone seemed to leave FourSquare after they buggered around with it. Perhaps it is just a feature in existing apps?

What's Already There?

Messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp allow you to share your location with one or more friends.

To me, it feels a bit weird to manually send a dropped pin to some / all of my contact. It also doesn't let you share "tomorrow I will be in…"

Using "Stories" is the common way to share an update with all contacts - but none of them let you automatically share your location in a story.

FourSquare's Swarm app allows you to check in to a "neighbourhood". But there's no obvious way of saying "London" or "Manchester" - and I'm not sure how close to an area you need to be to get an alert that your friend is there.

What's Next?

I don't want to build this. Trying to get everyone I know to adopt a new app isn't going to happen. With the fragmentation of messaging and the lack of interoperability, this is likely to remain an unsolved problem for some time.

So here's my strategy.

• Get back in to using FourSquare. Most of my friends seemed to stop using it back in 2017 when it was split into Swarm. But a few are still on there.
• Manually post a story on Mastodon, BlueSky, Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram saying "Visiting Hamburg next week. Anyone want a beer?"
• Hope that something better comes along.

Why is it so hard to passively stalk my friends' locations?

I feel terribly guilty when I visit a new city, post photos of my travels, only to have a friend say "Hey! Why didn't you let me know you were in my neck of the woods?"

Similarly, if I bump into an old acquaintance at a conference, we both tend to say "If only I'd known you were here, we could have had dinner together last night!"

I do enjoy the serendipity of events like FOSDEM - randomly seeing a mate and expressing the joy of spontaneity. But I also like arranging to meet up in advance.

At the moment, my strategy is sending a blast on social media saying "I'm visiting [this city] next week, anyone fancy a beer and a natter?" I've met friends all over Europe, Australia, and New Zealand that way. It mostly works. But I can't help feeling it is inefficient and prone to missing connections.

I even wrote my own code to auto-post FourSquare checkins to my other social media sites.

Here are my ideal scenarios. Imagine something built in to Signal / WhatsApp / Whatever app you already use.

Plan In Advance

I tell my app that I'm going to Barcelona from 14th - 19th February and am happy to meet any of my friends.

✨Background Magic✨

My friend Alice has also planned a trip to Barcelona around those dates. She gets a ping saying that one of her friends is going to be in the same city. Does she want to know more?

So far, so Dopplr.

My friend Bob lives just outside of Barcelona. He's set his "willing to travel" settings to be about 30 minutes, so also receives a ping.

I don't know that either of them have seen the notification until they decide they want to meet.

Spontaneous Fun

I step off the train in Manchester, England England. Perhaps the app notices I'm away from home, or maybe I press the "Anyone Around?" button.

On a map I can see friends who have shared their rough location. I decide to message Chuck to see if he's free for a chat.

Dave notices my location is now within his preferred travel distance. He gives me a ring.

A bit like how FourSquare used to be - but with less precision.

Downsides

The above is very much the "happy path". It doesn't look at any of the knotty problems or grapple with the UI that would be needed to make this work. But we know the technology for sharing location is viable - so what are the social issues that make this so difficult?

Social Awkwardness

"Oh, fuck, Edgar's location says he's in town. Can we pretend to be out of the country?"

Alternatively, "Huh, I know at least a dozen people who live in Skegness. Why aren't any of them responding to me?"

Social pressure and awkwardness are hard problems. No one wants to use the app that makes you feel like a friendless loser.

Privacy

Do you want your friends knowing your every movement? I'm sure some people do, but most probably don't. It's possible to sketch out some vague controls:

• Only send a notification if I push this button.
• Don't send alerts if I am within this radius of my home / work.
• Fuzz my location to the city / state / country level.

Danger

Is it a risk to let people know vaguely where you are? Is meeting up with (semi-) strangers from the Internet a smart life choice? Is having an app stalk you across the globe giving too much data to advertisers?

Does that creep from work abuse the system to keep popping up whenever you're out with friends?

Technology

I said the technology exists for this, and that was sort of true. Every device has GPS & an Internet connection. Storing a log of friends and sending them a message is a solved problem.

But is it solved in a decentralised and privacy preserving way?

No one wants to give all this power to one company. Google will build it and kill it. Facebook will sell your secrets to dropshippers. A funky start-up will be acquhired by Apple & restricted to iOS devices.

My location is fuzzed to an acceptable degree of imprecision and then sent… where? To all my friends directly? To a central server? Can k-anonymity help?

Is this a separate app? Everyone seemed to leave FourSquare after they buggered around with it. Perhaps it is just a feature in existing apps?

What's Already There?

Messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp allow you to share your location with one or more friends.

To me, it feels a bit weird to manually send a dropped pin to some / all of my contact. It also doesn't let you share "tomorrow I will be in…"

Using "Stories" is the common way to share an update with all contacts - but none of them let you automatically share your location in a story.

FourSquare's Swarm app allows you to check in to a "neighbourhood". But there's no obvious way of saying "London" or "Manchester" - and I'm not sure how close to an area you need to be to get an alert that your friend is there.

What's Next?

I don't want to build this. Trying to get everyone I know to adopt a new app isn't going to happen. With the fragmentation of messaging and the lack of interoperability, this is likely to remain an unsolved problem for some time.

So here's my strategy.

• Get back in to using FourSquare. Most of my friends seemed to stop using it back in 2017 when it was split into Swarm. But a few are still on there.
• Manually post a story on Mastodon, BlueSky, Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram saying "Visiting Hamburg next week. Anyone want a beer?"
• Hope that something better comes along.

Palindromic #Foursquare #SwarmApp check-in number 26,262 yesterday morning at Miller Meadow Forest Preserve (South), Forest Park, Illinois: https://swarmapp.com/user/9218262/checkin/69da6285a907c833a4b60241?s=qpuHOKm8Z-4HfOKBeSxBv_BgLp0

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Bastianoso/116154155821530018

Ich glaube ich habe einen Weg gefunden: Open Street Map → Ort teilen → Kurzbefehl erstellt Kalendereintrag mit Namen und Adresse des Ortes im privaten Kalender. Ganz ohne #Swarm/ #Foursquare #Dutgemacht #did #digitalindependenceday

Hab eine Mail bekommen, dass jemand auf Swarm mit mir befreundet sein möchte.

Swarm?? Das gibt’s noch?? 🤪

#Swarm #Foursquare

Building my own Swarm / Foursquare / Gowalla on OSM

https://blog.notmyhostna.me/posts/building-my-own-swarm-foursquare-gowalla-on-osm

#openstreetmap #swift #ios #rails #foursquare #gowalla #selfhosting

OK gang! I can now automatically crosspost my #FourSquare checkins to Mastodon and BlueSky.

If you use #Swarm and fancy giving it a go, the Python code is at https://gitlab.com/edent/swarmtosocial/-/blob/main/swarmtosocial.py

Right, I've got my #FourSquare API key and can manually post check-ins to #SwarmApp.

Going to see if I can automatically get them to appear on Mastodon 🙂

If you are still on #FourSquare / #Swarm please can you add me as a friend.

You should be able to find me by searching for "edent" or my full name.

Thanks!

Palindromic #Foursquare #SwarmApp check-in number 26,062: at Metra - Berwyn https://swarmapp.com/user/9218262/checkin/6978bc961baf7b59e8d458ee?s=LPdiTvfPQ0gppdXxh81eKDA8-O0

Imports FourSquare / Swarm data into Anchor (dropanchor.app) lexicon. tangled.org/tijs.org/fsq... Tags: #FourSquare #Swarm #Anchor

tijs.org/fsq2anchor

Merry #SitecoreLunch today. Discussed:

🐮 #Farmville
📍 #Foursquare
🎥 Video storage
📈 #GTM analytics
👉 #Facebook pokes
🛂 ESTA requirements
💰 Copyright extortion
🚨 #Next.js & #React exploits
🖼️ Images in #SitecoreContentHub
🕸️ #SitecorePersonalize + #SitecoreContentHub

See you same time next week! 🥪🥗

Schon 16 Jahre her?

#Swarm #4sq #Foursquare #local

Engadget: The Foursquare founder’s new app is an AI-powered ‘DJ’ for neighborhood updates. “Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley has unveiled his latest venture and yes, it’s another location-based social app. But, rather than the check-ins Crowley first popularized more than 15 years ago, ‘BeeBot’ has a very 2025 take on the concept.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/07/engadget-the-foursquare-founders-new-app-is-an-ai-powered-dj-for-neighborhood-updates/

Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley is back with "BeeBot," an AI-powered audio DJ for your neighborhood. It's like your AirPods just got a sassy sidekick whispering local updates, powered by LLMs and a TikTok-style algorithm. No more check-ins, just ambient digital gossip. Is this the future of IRL discovery, or just another app yelling at us?

Link: https://www.engadget.com/apps/the-foursquare-founders-new-app-is-an-ai-powered-dj-for-neighborhood-updates-202326296.html?src=rss
#AI #TechNews #LocationTech #Foursquare #BeeBot

I'm expecting this kind of street-level annotation to have lots of uses, from groups of friends replicating #FourSquare, to communities organizing events, or citizen #Journalists recording what's going on in their neighborhood.

Please share this with anyone who might benefit from sharing location notes online. It's time for me to start collecting some needs from real-world users.

https://github.com/EmissarySocial/atlas

🌍 Foursquare isn’t just a map — it’s a data-driven platform for discovery and engagement.

This Snipesearch Adclicks feature explains how publishers can claim listings, link their sites, and earn from every visit using Adclicks.

Read here 👉

https://adclicks.thereview.website/monetising-the-foursquare-ecosystem/

#Foursquare #Adclicks #Snipesearch #WebMonetization #Publishing

@benpate @n00q as a long term user of #foursquare/ #swarm, yes absolutely.

#Swarm kann von einen Tag auf den anderen ganz schön viel Arbeit sein. #4sq ist kaum out. #foursquare

I still miss #foursquare

Seeing a friend check-in at a coffee shop near me and spontaneously going "oh hey, I'll head over there too" still feels unmatched

The spatial join?: The end of the spatial join? Vikram Gundeti, CTO of #Foursquare, is reimagining #geospatial for #datascientists by eliminating traditional GIS hurdles and embracing #ML-friendly, agent-ready solutions. Will geodata be seamlessly accessible and...
https://spatialists.ch/posts/2025/08/06-the-spatial-join/ #GIS #GISchat #geospatial #SwissGIS

I was curious to see an update to Swarm - the Mobile app of Foursquare - so I gave it a try after many years of inactivity.
Brings a lot of good memories 🥲 #swarm #app
Anyone in my timeline still using it? #foursquare #swarmapp

The end of the spatial join? Vikram Gundeti, CTO of #Foursquare, is reimagining #geospatial for #datascience by eliminating traditional GIS hurdles and embracing #ML-friendly, agent-ready solutions. Will geodata be "mapless" by default?
https://spatialists.ch/posts/2025/08/06-the-spatial-join/ #GIS #GISchat #geospatial #SwissGIS

> "A few months ago, Foursquare teamed up directly with ChatGPT, meaning Foursquare’s location data is now powering many of the AI’s responses.
> What’s really wild about this is that Foursquare has pretty much retired its consumer-facing apps and websites. Yet, it’s now a key aggregator for AI search."

No shade to #Foursquare, but this is damning: #AI 'insight' is based on what was succeeding years ago, rather than what's relevant now. It's like bizarro-world #SEO
/via https://www.brightlocal.com/blog/ai-search-using-listings-sources/

It seems #MagicEarth are at least listening to the user community and holding off on the switch to a paid app for #Android until they can find some payment method that doesn't require Google service (I hope this doesn't mean that development stalls until they can get their revenue stream)

IMO if fhey are charging for it the app they should have a full website portal with payment facility *and* access to support with a ticketing system and facility to add crowdsourced map updates (rather than expecting endusers to work out which is #OSM and which is #Foursquare or other third parties), and not relying just on email or worse, Reddit) - basically all that #TomTom *used* to have not that long ago but abandoned...

#navi #maps #GNSS #OpenStreetMap

📍: Bridge 109 - Upperton Road Bridge
ℹ️: road bridge
🗺: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=52.6256203422884&mlon=-1.14306733266556#map=17/52.6256203422884/-1.14306733266556
📸: Photo by Paul Conneally on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/98509073@N00/11157848253

#canal #narrowboat #england #uk #flickr #square #squareformat #amaro #iphoneography #instagramapp #uploaded:by=instagram #foursquare:venue=4e69ebf5b0fb8b8a83f4731e

I’m one of the last one still using #Swarm / #foursquare. One of the thing I enjoy is seeing everywhere I’ve checked in the last 15 years. It’s wild.

Here’s how much I cover the map of #Philippines , #Luzon and #Manila

📍: Winding Hole Goytre Wharf
ℹ️: winding hole
🗺: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=51.7510130406495&mlon=-2.99627632496584#map=17/51.7510130406495/-2.99627632496584
📸: Photo by MrSimonWood on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/47981017@N06/8105443270

#canal #narrowboat #wales #uk #flickr #square #lofi #squareformat #monmouthshireandbreconcanal #iphoneography #instagramapp #uploaded:by=instagram #foursquare:venue=4bf00b34d4f70f47ed63390f

Any #Foursquare #4sq #swarm admins / super users at #38c3?

Weekly output: teens online (x2), Foursquare

This year has one last full workweek left, which seems like quite enough after everything else that 2024 has served up.

12/10/2014: Teens: Online Time Improves Our Well-Being, Though We Could Use More Sleep, PCMag

After spending Monday at the Family Online Safety Institute’s annual conference in D.C., I wrote up the surprisingly positive results of a survey that organization ordered up about teenage attitudes about time spent online. Lest people point to the Google sponsorship of this report to invalidate its results, I noted other studies that found similar results.

12/12/2014: Teens Spent Less Time on the Top Social Apps This Year, With Two Exceptions, PCMag

Two days later, I wrote up another study of online teenagers–but this one didn’t ask how they felt about where they spent that connected time.

12/14/2014: Foursquare City Guide Checks Out, Shuts Down Its App, PCMag

In this feeling-my-age post, I chronicled the demise of an app that 15 years ago had seemed to have a legit shot at taking Yelp’s place as my go-to service for finding someplace to get a meal.

#4sq #FamilyOnlineSafetyInstitute #FOSI #Foursquare #FoursquareSwarm #locationAware #PewResearchCenter #teenSocialMediaUse #teenageSocialMediaUse

Trying to figure out how to spend the remainder of my stay in Valencia has got me missing #Foursquare, which was my go to app when travelling. I know there is #Wikivoyage, but there is something to be said for an app that can simply show you things nearby.

Quick glance at the new #Foursquare dataset with 100M places worldwide [1], based on do-me's data upload [2]. See the jupyter notebook here [3].

[1]: https://location.foursquare.com/resources/blog/products/foursquare-open-source-places-a-new-foundational-dataset-for-the-geospatial-community/
[2]: https://huggingface.co/datasets/do-me/foursquare_places_100M
[3]: https://code.ad.ioer.info/wip/snippets/html/2024-11-25_foursquare_parquet.html

#geopandas #geoparquet, #python #datascience #datashader #jupyter

e487 – Data Privacy and you, NOT!

This week Andy, Michael, and Michael have a location based show, with discussion on FourSquare, data Privacy, and fast moving robots. #security #privacy #locationBasedServices #disney #foursquare #3dprinting #firstAmendment #amazon

gamesatwork.biz/2024/10/28/e48…

e487 – Data Privacy and you, NOT!

This week Andy, Michael, and Michael have a location based show, with discussion on FourSquare, data Privacy, and fast moving robots. #security #privacy #locationBasedServices #disney #foursquare #3dprinting #firstAmendment #amazon

https://gamesatwork.biz/2024/10/28/e487-data-privacy-and-you-not/

I have duplicated the original dude on the #Dodgeball site as an illustration in #Procreate. Locative services are in the air with the announced shutdown of #Foursquare City Guides. Call this... fan art. https://artlung.com/blog/2024/10/21/dodgeball-dude/

Sad to see the foursquare city guide shutting down:

https://foursquare.com/city-guide-sunset/

I wish someone (tm) would build an alternative "FediSquare" based on #openstreetmap

#4sq #foursquare

Oh wie schade! #Foursquare wird abgeschaltet. — Na dann gute Nacht, Mastodon!

btw: Welche Alternative zu #4sq nutzt ihr?