Foursquare City Guide

I’ve been using 4sq for years and still find the ratings and tips to have higher value than other similar sites or apps (you know which ones) where 5⭐️ reviews (many obviously fake) are too readily handed out. 4sq ratings are much more accurate and I find I can rely on them, especially when I travel. However, the UI has not evolved in a long time and can be difficult to navigate. There is no easy way to find one’s own tips for a location, find places nearby where one has been before, etc. The edit page (especially hours) is clunky to use. There is no link to restaurants’ reservations link on OpenTable or Resy. Finally, there are superusers and I have been at level 1 for years now, even though I submit frequent tips (over 500 so far), photos (over 500), and edits (hundreds), and now have 15 separate “expertises”. Still, no indication that I might move up the superuser ladder, which is not a big deal but is still frustrating, when I used to see other users, which much lower activity than mine, who were higher level superusers.

I was surprised to hear from the app developer who managed to get back about half my information which made things a little better so I upped my rating from 1 star to 3. I am still missing my reviews. I recently took the time to review Shawarma and Gyro Express. There was zero information on this recently opened restaurant. I took photos of the menu, the restaurant and left an excellent review because I love this place, but it’s not in my liked places. The incomplete menus are still an issue. I’m missing all my out of town stuff from Boston to Virginia Beach. If I take the time to review and add photos, id like to be able to access those, so still disappointed. I also noticed that the reviews are characters limited with no warnings. You can’t give a good review and include all the good stuff in a few sentences. I loved URBAN SPOON and wish it were modeled more after that. Very disappointed. This app recently had an overhaul and in the process, I not only lost all my saved (to try) places but also my favorites. I have left a few reviews on the new app to help populate it but I can’t even access that either. Now when I look for something all I get are incomplete restaurant profiles with no menus. It’s been months since the update and most restaurants are asking us to update photos, menu etc. Surely in this day and age, the transition to the new format should have seamlessly integrated the old data.

Hi guys! What’s going on with the app lately? For a couple of months now I’ve been unable to delete entries from my history. These entries were added by background location tracking but they don’t correspond to places I’ve actually been. They account for 10-20% of the places in my history and I want to clean them up. I’ve tried both “no, and remove from my history option” when selecting a place, and also swipe to the left and delete on the history screen. In both cases, the locations are still in the list when I refresh and even after lots of time has passed. This part of the app really needs a some testing and UX love.

Up until about a week ago I always considered Foursquare a more functional & aesthetically pleasing alternative to Yelp, however, that ship has sailed with the removal of the “Expertise” system. Removal of the “Expertise” system did a handful of really detrimental things: removing the ability to easily know if a user was reliable, removing a great organizational system for your tips, & removing a fun sense of progression. This update really killed Foursquare for me, & that’s with it already lingering behind Yelp in terms of users & current data. TLDR: Foursquare lost a lot of functionality in a recent update. It’s not worthwhile & you should focus your energy & time on Yelp.

This app doesn’t even get as far as an account login/sign up. It’s immediately “oops something went wrong” followed by a blank screen with a loading animation that never goes away. I submitted a bug report but the process to do so was so cumbersome and unclear, I’m not sure if my bug report was even captured. This problem persists through using WiFi and cellular data and after re-installing the app from scratch. I’m a software engineer and this is pretty terrible guys. I was ready to replace Yelp with this because I’m simply tired of Yelp, but that’s not possible if the extent of your app’s functionality is an error message and a blank loading screen.