Business

Foursquare changing app

Foursquare is going back to square one.

The New York City tech firm tore up its old app and is reworking its mobile, location-based social network.

The new product launches today after what the company called six months of nonstop work, culminating in an all-nighter with the whole staff at the downtown headquarters last night.

“We ripped apart the app completely and are rebuilding it from the ground up,” said Erin Gleason, a FourSquare spokeswoman. “It will look totally different, and the functionality is going to change.”

One of the biggest revelations for the company has been that users are less interested in check-ins of their locations and more interested in recommendations near where they are. The realization has the potential to change the company’s DNA; it was founded with a gaming aspect and included rewards for avid users.

Foursquare, co-founded by CEO Dennis Crowley in 2009, was designed for users to “check in” at restaurants, stores and other venues, and the most frequent visitors to the locales become “mayors.”

The gaming orientation is still much a part of the company, but it is being “de-emphasized,” Foursquare said.

The company redesigned itself based on the billions of inputs of data it’s received over the years from its now more than 20 million users, who have checked in more than 2 billion times.

“We’ve never sat back like this and thought about the app based on how people are using it,” Gleason said. “We’re starting from square one again.”

The new app will feature more prominent recommendations for users to explore businesses in their immediate neighborhoods. It will also show more of their friends’ activity beyond check-ins, such as alerts about new posts and followers.

The new app also was built with merchants in mind and could lead to new benefits for businesses. Gleason said it would be easier for business owners to identify potential customers and target deals to get them in the door.

The company is still in the early stages of figuring out a way to generate revenue outside its massive fundraising rounds. Last year, the company raised $50 million and was valued at about $600 million.

One venture capitalist who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Foursquare would have a hard time converting users into dollars, and said the new app was an admission that the original concept wasn’t working.

“Nobody’s checking in on Foursquare,” the VC said.