Foursquare is killing its city guide app to focus on the check-in app Swarm

It’s the end of an era for one of the App Store’s earliest success stories. Foursquare is shutting down its signature city guide app in order to “focus our efforts on building an even better experience in Swarm,” the company said in an update. The app will shut down December 15, while the web version will stay online until “early 2025.”

The shutdown is a notable reversal of a strategy the company announced a decade ago when it, controversially, opted to split its famed “check-in” service into a separate app. That app became known as Swarm while the Foursquare-branded app became a “city guide” full of user-generated reviews and local recommendations.

Now, Foursquare says its future is, once again, the check-in. “We’re also introducing exciting new features and capabilities into Swarm throughout the year (👀 some of which may look familiar to you) in order to unlock new use cases that may better support your needs,” the company said, adding that additional updates are expected “early next year.”

It’s not clear why the company is changing its strategy to elevate Swarm over its namesake app. The company laid off more than 100 employees earlier this year in an effort to “streamline” operations. Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, who is currently co-chair of the company’s board of directors, said in a post on Threads that the company is “doing fine,” though he expressed disappointment with the news. “I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I have been in a real funk these last few days over this news,” he wrote.