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Tag: Connected Apps

  • Foursquare Adds to Its Connected Apps Offerings

    If you haven’t tried connecting third-party apps to your Foursquare account, you’re doing Foursquare wrong. Sure, Foursquare offers plenty of information on the locations at which you check-in, but having the right connected apps can help you make the best out of every venue you find.

    Foursquare’s connected apps allows users to attach third-party apps to their accounts. Depending on which connected apps you choose to employ, different information will pop up on the check-in page at participating locations. For instance, if I connected the “Eat This, Not That” app, I may see low-fat dining suggestions at the restaurant I checked-into. Or if I connected the “Untappd” app to my account, I may see which beers are popular at the local bar.

    Today, Foursquare is announcing four new additions to the connected app family. They are:

    GeoPollster, which will let you know the political leanings of some businesses you frequent; The Winester Square, which is a wine-lovers app (similar to Untappd, which is for beer); #Mom, which will automatically alert your mother and let her know you’re safe when you check-in; and YOLO, which will tell you the most expensive menu item at participating restaurants.

    Foursquare currently boasts 18 different connected apps., including Foodspotting, Sonar, and the Weather Channel. Their last addition to the group was the After Credits app back in August, which notifies moviegoers if they should stay after the credits for bonus scenes.

  • Find Out If You Should Stay Until After the Credits with New Foursquare Connected App

    Find Out If You Should Stay Until After the Credits with New Foursquare Connected App

    Well, isn’t this neat. Foursquare has just announced that the After Credits app has been added to their list of Connected Apps. What does that mean for you? Saving time. Sweet, sweet time.

    If you’re not up to speed on Foursquare’s Connected Apps, here’s a quick refresher: Foursquare allows users to connect third party apps to their Foursquare accounts. These Connected Apps will then show users additional information based on their check-in, right on the check-in page. For instance, if I connected Untappd to my Foursquare account, it may tell me what beers my friends have tired at the bar I just checked into. Or if I connected Foodspotting, a small info box may show me what’s been spotted at the new sushi restaurant I just checked into.

    After Credits let’s you know whether or not you need to stay in the theater, well, after the credits. With more and more films (like those associated with Marvel) adding extra scenes and teasers to the end of the reel, it would be incredibly nice to know ahead of time whether or not you need to stay an extra few minutes.

    Now, when you check-in to a particular movie at a theater, the After Credits app will display this information right on your check-in screen, above the points section:

    It’s a small little feature announcement coming from the Foursquare Engineering blog, but it’s a cool one. Off the top of my head, I can remember at like a half dozen times in the past year where this would have been handy.

  • Foursquare Integrates Foodspotting, Other Apps Into Its Core Service

    Mobile was a big deal a few years ago. Everybody had to move their apps to mobile and bring the desktop experience to consumers on the go. Now everybody is moving towards a mobile ecosystem where our apps are all connected. Facebook has been leading the charge with Open Graph, but foursquare’s attempt at connecting apps over mobile is one of the more interesting yet.

    Location-based social media powerhouse, foursquare, announced their new Connected Apps platform yesterday. They don’t explicitly say that they were influenced by Facebook’s Open Graph, but the idea behind it is the same. Developers can craft their apps to work within foursquare to provide additional information without having to leave the foursquare experience.

    To elaborate, take this example: You are traveling to a local restaurant that you have not been to before. You check in with the foursquare mobile app to let your friends know where you’re at. On the information screen, you have Foodspotting set up within foursquare now to let you know what other people have eaten at that location. So now you have a good idea of what to expect food-wise from this location without having to open another app.

    You can now see why foursquare is pretty excited about the possibilities. Not only do they get great third-party app content on their platform, but they get to keep people using their platform for all their needs. The foursquare gods are benevolent, however, and will provide links to all apps that reside within their platform. The hope is that will drive traffic and adoption between foursquare and all of their partner apps just like Facebook’s Open Graph does.

    The new feature is currently in developer preview, but app developers can check it out now. While foursquare doesn’t have the size of Facebook behind it, it’s definitely more focused. If you have an app that can benefit people visiting new places like restaurants, parks, etc; then you might want to look into developing an app for foursquare.

    The foursquare blog has a list of some services that are already building apps within their platform to take advantage of Connected Apps. The aforementioned Foodspotting is one of the major apps, but there’s also less food oriented apps like The Weather Channel which tells you the current conditions when you check in.

    The new Connected Apps platform is available today on Android and iOS. The last two remaining BlackBerry developers will get access to the SDK and APIs at a later date. It’s important to reiterate that this is a developer preview so everything might not work as intended. The guys at foursquare are hoping to launch the fully-featured version of the Connected Apps platform sometime later this year.