Foursquare City Guide

The check-in app that made mayors and badges, split into two, then closed to focus on the half it had spun off

Shut down
19902026

Foursquare was the location app that launched at SXSW on 11 March 2009 and turned going out into a game: check in, earn badges, become mayor of the coffee shop. It reached ten million users by June 2011 and fifty million by 2014, when the company split the check-ins into a new app, Swarm, and rebuilt Foursquare as a City Guide of recommendations. That app was retired on 15 December 2024 and its website on 28 April 2025, with the company focusing on Swarm and its location-data business.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2009
  2. 11 March 2009 Launch
    Launch at SXSW

    Check in, earn badges, become mayor.

  3. 2010
  4. March 2010 Peak
    One million users

    SXSW 2010 is the breakout; Facebook and Gowalla chase check-ins.

  5. 2011
  6. 20 June 2011 Peak
    Ten million users

    Twenty million a year later.

  7. 2012
  8. April 2012 Funding
    $600 million valuation

    A round led by Spark; over two billion check-ins.

  9. 2014
  10. 1 May 2014 pivot
    Check-ins split off into Swarm

    Swarm launches 15 May; Foursquare becomes a guide.

  11. 7 August 2014 Rebrand
    Foursquare relaunches as a City Guide

    A Yelp-style recommendation app; users revolt.

  12. 2024
  13. 22 October 2024 Shutdown announced
    City Guide to close

    Foursquare will focus on Swarm.

  14. 15 December 2024 Shutdown
    City Guide app switched off

    11:59 PM ET; the web version follows.

  15. 2025
  16. 28 April 2025 Shutdown
    Web version closes

    Data export via Swarm remains.

The site through time

Browse foursquare.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2009 2012 2015 2018 2021 2024 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Foursquare Labs 2009–2024 Founded Founded by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai in New York

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Registered accounts 10 million 20 June 2011 Reported Announced by Foursquare in June 2011; twenty million by April 2012, fifty million by 2014
Registered accounts ▲ 50 million May 2014 Reported Cited by the company at the time of the Swarm split

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: On 22 October 2024 Foursquare told users it was retiring the City Guide app to "focus our efforts on building an even better experience in Foursquare Swarm". The mobile app was switched off on 15 December 2024 at 11:59 PM ET; the web version followed on 28 April 2025. Check-in histories and logins carried over to Swarm, and the company, now mostly a location-data business, said it was profitable and doing about $100 million a year.

Our analysis: Foursquare invented the check-in, then decided in 2014 that the check-in was a distraction from a Yelp-style guide, and moved it out to Swarm. Ten years later it closed the guide and kept Swarm, which is roughly an admission that the original game was the point all along. The company itself did fine: its real product had long since become the location data underneath, sold to other apps.

History [edit]

Mayors and badges

Foursquare launched at South by Southwest on 11 March 2009, the second try by Dennis Crowley after Dodgeball, which Google had bought in 2005 and shut down. The idea was tiny and addictive: open the app, "check in" at wherever you were, tell your friends, collect points and badges, and if you checked in somewhere more than anyone else you became its mayor, with a free coffee from the owner if you were lucky. It was the SXSW breakout of its year, and of the next.

By February 2011 it had seven million users, ten million by June 2011, and twenty million a year later. Brands did check-in deals, the White House and the Obama campaign joined, and Foursquare's map of tips became a genuinely useful guide to cities. It raised at a $600 million valuation in 2012 and its "Explore" recommendations, driven by two billion check-ins, were arguably better than Yelp's.

The split

On 1 May 2014 the company announced it was splitting in two. Check-ins, mayorships and the game moved to a new app called Swarm, launched on 15 May, and the Foursquare app relaunched on 7 August 2014 as a Yelp-style local search and recommendation guide, later officially "Foursquare City Guide". Longtime users hated it, mayorships were watered down, and both apps lost momentum. The company's real growth was underneath: Pilgrim, its location SDK, and the venue database it licensed to Apple, Uber, Twitter, Snap and thousands of other apps. Foursquare Labs became a location-data company that happened to still run two consumer apps.

Closing the guide

On 22 October 2024 Foursquare announced City Guide would close: the app on 15 December 2024, the website in early 2025 (it went dark on 28 April 2025). Users were pointed at Swarm, where their check-in histories, logins and photos already lived, and could export their data. Dennis Crowley, no longer running the company, said the business was profitable at around $100 million in revenue; it had laid off over 100 people earlier in the year. Fifteen years after the mayor of the coffee shop, the check-in game had outlived the guide it was supposed to be a stepping stone to.

The domain today

foursquare.com is the location-data company's site, with a City Guide sunset page explaining the closure and how to move to Swarm.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Foursquare, the new game in town The Washington Post 19 March 2009
  2. Foursquare now officially at 10 million users TechCrunch 20 June 2011
  3. Foursquare splits in two: check-ins go to Swarm The Verge 1 May 2014
  4. Some loyal Foursquare users are checking out after Swarm spinoff NPR 30 July 2014
  5. Foursquare is finally proving its dollar value TechCrunch 19 January 2018
  6. Foursquare is killing its city guide app to focus on the check-in app Swarm Engadget 22 October 2024 [archived]
  7. City Guide Sunset Foursquare 15 December 2024

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).