Now that Facebook is gearing up for its foray into the world of geolocation and the omnipresent “check-in” functionality, similar providers are hard at work bolstering their solutions to increase accuracy, reduce “check-in cheating,” and boost geolocation relevance.
Once such provider is Foursquare, who today announced that its made changes to improve its algorithms for serving up “places” when users open its various mobile apps to check-in. The updated algorithm now takes into account things like time of day, proximity, and popularity of the venue in determining which places to show you.
Foursquare has seen a large amount of places that users are “very unlikely to check into,” as the company puts it, referencing the abundance of user-created venues popping up that are only relevant to a small number of people. This combined with cheaters and the increasing number of duplicate venues has forced Foursquare to make some changes.
Though Foursquare has an enormous and ever-growing user-base, the company is facing fierce competition in the geolocation space. Increasing accuracy and the way they do things is important to maintain relevancy for the future.
