Foursquare revamps iPhone app to feature inline check-in photos

A few weeks after updating its website to include friends' check-in photos inline, foursquare is expanding the feature to its iPhone application, promising users enhanced context around their contacts' activities with fewer clicks. Version 3.4 of foursquare for iPhone also touts a refreshed UI including a new design scheme and bigger tap targets as well as a Here Now feature, which compiles photos and shouts from friends at the same location or event in one stream. Foursquare adds it is working to roll out the new features to its corresponding Android and BlackBerry apps.

The latest version of foursquare compiles photos and shouts from friends at the same location or event in one stream.

The new foursquare for iPhone does not include Lists, introduced for web users earlier this week. Lists enables users to assemble checklists of venues they wish to visit during an upcoming trip, locations they've recommended to friends, favorite restaurants, etc. Foursquare users may also share the results with friends--in addition, the Lists tool auto-completes places as users type and suggests related destinations. Foursquare adds it will roll out Lists to its mobile apps in the near future.

Earlier this summer, foursquare topped 10 million users worldwide, with check-ins at local venues now surpassing 3 million each day. Days later, the startup completed a new $50 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with contributions from existing investors O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Union Square Ventures as well as new investor, Spark Capital. Insiders say foursquare is now valued at $600 million.

Despite media buzz and investor excitement around services like foursquare, mobile check-in services remain a niche interest according to data issued in May by digital research firm comScore. Only 16.7 million U.S. wireless subscribers checked in at local destinations via mobile device in March 2011, corresponding to 7.1 percent of the total nationwide mobile population, comScore reports. Smartphone users exhibit a far greater interest in mobile check-in tools, making up 76.3 percent of all check-in app users.

For more:
- read this foursquare Blog entry

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