Make no bones about it, Foursquare has been adrift in rough waters. The company has been struggling to make revenue targets and convince VCs that its long-awaited smart features are worth the gamble. Now, promises will turn into action, as the geolocation company announced its new, “smarter” recommendation system as according to Bloomberg, “a major tech company” — later reported to be Microsoft — is supposedly kicking the tires on a strategic investment in the company.
Announced via the company’s blog, the new Foursquare app will roll out to just a few thousand people on Android phones. The overall technology is very similar to Foursquare’s old feature, Radar, which utilized push notifications to check in to saved locations. However, instead of pushing flagged content, Foursquare works in the background to push recommendations for nearby locations from friends and the overall Foursquare community. This expands Foursquare’s services to incorporate some passive location features, made popular a couple of years ago by SXSW darling Highlight.