Foursquare's undergone something of a Renaissance over the last few weeks—packing on new features like Radar and unlockable badge levels. Now, the social-mobile site is shifting its focus away from check-ins and towards exploration while optimizing the site for tablets.
The screen shot above shows the most obvious change to the Foursquare website—a large interactive Google map of your location pre-populated with various highlighted destinations. Trending places show up in yellow, places on your To-Do Lists are green, places with special offers pop in orange, and popular spots are blue. It also includes a pop-out window that suggests three places that are nearby and, hopefully, open. That should be a very handy feature—for me at least—since I routinely find myself standing on street corners wondering a) Where am I? b) Who am I? and c) Where the hell is the nearest burrito stand?
In addition, the Foursquare website has been optimized for display on tablets, Place Pages have been redesigned—with bigger, better pictures and a slick new layout—for easier readability, and social services—like commenting and stalking celebrities—have been moved to more prominent positions on the homepage. [Foursquare Blog]
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