Foursquare revamp makes it a lot more social 17

With a newly revamped interface, the big player in the location based social app arena Foursquare just got a bit more social on webOS. One competitor, Gowalla, does not do a whole lot better in that respect - but Streetbrew puts the social aspect front and center. This latest update to Foursquare attempts to do the same and does an admirable job.

Now when you bring up a location in the app, you see the mayor, 'tips' and 'more info'. This means that now the most important aspect of checking in, the social interaction, takes center stage. Plus, there is a row of buttons now along the bottom and one of them is the button to add your own tip. So now, right away you see how much activity is there and with a single tap you can be reading or adding to the discussion.

The other and perhaps more important social aspect of Foursquare, the shout feature, is now much easier to use as well. It's a button right there in the drop down menu at the top. You can also see your friend requests there, although you can't click on them to approve or deny them Correction: and you can click the names to see their profile and approve or deny the request.

In that same drop down menu, you can tap another button to see all local tips, and all your friends' check ins. On the check ins screen, you can tap a button to see a map of all their check ins to make it all the easier to track them down. Naturally on each check in on the list, you can tap the location name to bring up its info screen, or tap a friend's name to bring up their profile. From their profile, you can contact them in a few different ways right from there, and see their Foursquare stats. Now finding out where your friends are partying and connecting with them could not be any easier. Unless of course you just called them and asked them.

Also in the row of buttons at the bottom, you can now add the location to your to do list. This is a relatively important feature that was lacking in previous iterations. Adding to your to do list or checking off items always had to be done on the computer. Correction: was not as easy to find in previous iterations. I used Foursquare daily for months and never knew it was there. Now you can add one right there or tap on the drop down menu and hit a button to see your whole to do list.

If you want all the information on a location that used to be the only thing you saw, all you have to do is tap 'more info.' On the ensuing screen is all the category info, pictures, ATM's and more that used to be the main focus. You can even tap another button in the bottom row to send information about the location to a friend via email or text message.

It is also now much easier to flag a location as closed or erroneously located. It is another button that sits on the bottom of the screen at all times. Making this so easy to do can only help improve the quality of your finds in Foursquare.

This new version really changes the feel of Foursquare. It makes it a lot easier to use, and encourages users to be social. Hopefully this will inject a little more fun into checking in and definitely ups the ante for Gowalla. Big ups to the developer, Zhephree, who has done a great job on the update!