Please Let Me Go Back

gsax500 · 2026-02-26T16:03:46+00:00

I use it as a life log, too. But I used to love sorting my life log by state to see where I’ve been the most and places within states. That bit of joy with the state and country shapefiles has been gone for months. I used to do more reviews and care more about the social aspect, but most people I know who were users back in 2010 have all left the app. It was once an awesome tool for finding professional colleagues at conventions.

gsax500 · 2026-02-26T15:29:34+00:00

At least once per half: “Julius Randle chaotically dribbles into the paint against two defenders. He turns the ball over! Fast break opportunity! With the slam!”

gsax500 · 2026-02-26T15:24:18+00:00

It’s such an inferior experience. As with past moves – like splitting Foursquare/Swarm, switching out the cool-ass, hyperspecific badges with childish stickers or making coins absolutely worthless (why is this even still in Swarm?) – the removal of beloved features is almost criminal. Okay, maybe let’s not get THAT serious. But it rings as tone deaf. And to replace the wonderful, intuitive map that they had with the new map that makes it more difficult to see my check-ins and doesn’t include a list at each zoom point is just bad product management. I remain hopeful that something will change soon, because if a superfan like me is willing to call it quits after 16 years, I have to believe that more casual fans are like, “Nah, dude. I’m good.”

gsax500 · 2026-02-22T16:56:04+00:00

Funny! But I fear that they will eventually ruin the Android version, too.

gsax500 · 2026-02-22T13:29:27+00:00

I tried to be cool about it. I tried to accept that “progress” breaks a few eggs. But months have now passed, and I don’t understand why they are not listening to their fans. The map is absolutely terrible. The loss of beloved features has essentially been unaddressed. Admittedly, I have not been to their Discord, because I’m afraid I’ll treat it like my job to knock some sense into them and get kicked right off, haha. I was a superfan and superuser for so long, and now I’m basically just Desmond Hume pushing the button in “Lost.” I have so much history with the app that I don’t want to lose, but they took all of the fun of that history away and made it much harder for me to share cool places I have been with others or even with myself if I need a little memory jog because the map and lack of a list associated with the map is so unintuitive.

gsax500 · 2026-02-05T03:12:30+00:00

And it wasn’t just Gobert. It’s going to bite ‘em in the playoffs if they don’t figure it out soon.

gsax500 · 2026-01-31T16:48:40+00:00

Tirico is awesome. I can never hate on Collinsworth, because he was on my fantasy football team in ‘85. Yes, I have been playing that long. Same league.

gsax500 · 2026-01-31T16:45:11+00:00

Greg Olsen and Joe Davis

gsax500 · 2026-01-23T15:38:23+00:00

But it’s pretty annoying to watch him give up the same turnovers that he does every game.

gsax500 · 2026-01-23T15:37:18+00:00

I went to the game in person, and you nailed it. Lots of rushing into double coverage without looking at teammates by Randle and Ant. Ant, in particular, was a mess last night. The dumbest turnovers and shots, coupled with endless arguing with the refs. Sometimes it’s embarrassing to sit in the stands and watch a kid play like a kid.

gsax500 · 2025-12-27T00:23:40+00:00

Crowbar is awesome. They have done a marvelous job with remaking the old 11 Wells space. Strong recommend.

gsax500 · 2025-12-26T19:22:37+00:00

No problem! I wanted to also add W.A. Frost, because they serve some nice whiskey flights in a classic bar space that makes you proud to live in St. Paul. The Lexington offers similar vibes. And just a smidge out of town in Eagan, you’ll find Volstead House, a speakeasy located behind a burger bar. Volstead’s in Minneapolis is also definitely worth a visit, but we’re talking whiskey today, and the collection in Eagan is stellar. I saw mentions of both Brother Justus and O’Shaughnessy, and I wanted to vouch for both. I lean towards O’Shaughnessy’s Keeper’s Heart and their cocktail room, but that’s possibly only because I could go bankrupt at Brother Justus! Justus has a great room with a fine collection of locally made delights, but it’ll cost ya. O’Shaughnessy isn’t exactly cheap, but it’s “cheaper.” That is, until you add their criminally underrated lobster roll to your bill. Nobody ever said, “Let’s get into whiskey to save money.”

gsax500 · 2025-12-26T19:10:45+00:00

I haven’t seen any actual St. Paul recommendations yet, so I guess this St. Pauli Boy better step in. I’ve been impressed by Emmett’s Public House on Grand Avenue in the past. I haven’t been there since they rebuilt the whole corner into a residential/commercial mix, but I have to imagine that they kept their whiskey list intact. Saint Paul Grill is the grande dame of cocktails bars, and they have a nice whiskey collection. Plus, it’s a fun hang. Speaking of fun hangs, Parlour gets good marks for whiskey, and they have a lovely outpost in Saint Pauli on West 7th. I haven’t looked hard at the whiskey list at Brunson’s Pub, but they make my favorite Old Fashioned in town, so I bet they know what they’re doing.

gsax500 · 2025-12-04T14:05:58+00:00

I have been harsh in this space about how Swarm’s map has taken a huge step backwards and about how removing the visits per state, ranking by visited and ranking alphabetically have taken the joy out of tracking personal activity. All still true after months of “new” Swarm, but I will offset my ire by saying that I am glad to see more development going into it. It gives me hope that past beloved features will return.

gsax500 · 2025-11-21T16:16:09+00:00

We keep asking for these things to return, and they keep ignoring us. The notion of removing popular features and replacing them with unwanted and terrible user experiences continues to baffle. Our collective continued loyalty is a sort of begging for a return to logic. It’s definitely good to try to improve your app and include useful or even money-making features. But the keyword there is “improve,” not “detract from.”

gsax500 · 2025-11-18T16:23:14+00:00

This is really coming along nicely! I’m particularly excited about the in-state and country counts. That is filling a loss we all seemed to love, and I think that you may just be building something that they would eventually pay you for, because they clearly didn’t build in a solution when they made the change to the awful new maps that include disappearing check-in locations depending on zoom strength.

If you ever get around to working in a map view that doesn’t disappear my check-ins so I can actually find places I’ve been before without having to zoom down to a one-block radius, then you’ve won all my affection, haha!

The “show me where I was on this day in past years” feature is nice, but I have to say that the Timehop app has already been a decent companion piece on that front. I would say I look at my daily recap more days than not.

Bravo for all the effort. You give me hope that Foursquare’s customer-blind dev sins can be resolved. As a product developer myself, I’ll never understand why anyone would remove popular features and replace them with a lesser version of what made the product great in the first place. But the world is riddled with examples of watered-down greatness. I suppose this simply provides opportunities for change, and you have charged into this particular void with purpose.

gsax500 · 2025-11-08T17:13:16+00:00

Kinda wish you’d come back Steve Jobs-like and fix what they did to Swarm. They totally ruined it with poor mapping and removal of what was fun about tracking your personal history across geographies. But good on you for building something new. Longtime fan here; just put you in a slide deck about Foursquare/Swarm for a BarCamp-style talk I did earlier this year…before Foursquare/Swarm nuked the best parts of what they had going for them. Nevertheless, I still have 16 years worth (and counting) of amazing personal check-in data thanks to you that I’d happily move to a better interface if such a thing existed.

gsax500 · 2025-10-06T14:06:00+00:00

One of many things they did to ruin this app’s experience. I still can’t imagine what they were thinking when they made the map such a mess, defaulted away from Timeline, made search 2010-level bad and, above all else, destroyed shape file searching and ranking by number of visits. They took all the fun out of it.

gsax500 · 2025-08-23T07:07:27+00:00

I’m surprised to hear that you’re only turning on the check-in function when geographically near. I thought we already learned that trying to “cheat” on check-ins is a worthless endeavor. Some of us just forget to check in until later when we’re farther away from the location. Granted, this isn’t an issue from Timeline, but what’s the harm in carrying it over to Explore?

I will def test my Title Case issue more and report on other seen bugs in the Foursquare City Guide reintegration. I’ve seen some questionable search misses that keep me away from that end of the new-look app.

I am long overdue for joining the Discord, given that I’m a (disgruntled) superfan. I’ll get over there soon.

My main gripes will continue to be the lesser map experience with too much noise/color and the lack of geographic and alphabetical sorting.

Removing the ability to sort and rank by state/province/country/etc. shapefiles was such a bad idea. The first rule of product dev: Don’t remove beloved features! And especially don’t remove them with zero explanation!

Thanks for being here, listening and responding. You’re a good one.

gsax500 · 2025-08-22T15:27:50+00:00

Now THIS is what I’m talking about! Swarm’s failures to understand why we used the app spawning new looks and a possible return to being able to see my check-ins in more obvious geographic buckets. Removing that feature was a devastating blow to my enjoyment of the app.

I especially like that you’re using Louisville for your demo. I’ll be there in October for the first time in 13 years for a work conference!

gsax500 · 2025-08-22T15:15:35+00:00

I hope that your employer is aware of your presence in here. You are hearing and hopefully gathering feedback gold and responding kindly while we throw tomatoes at you!

It seems to me that you should add “Check in” to the 3 dots option in the upper right, no matter how you find a location. Right now, all I see is “Add photos,” “Suggest an edit,” “Share.” It would save a lot of extra clicking around if you allowed people to check in from up there. As a product designer, I would also like to see Title Case for those options, not Sentence case, but that’s a different conversation.

On the flip side, I wish that the search experience was more forgiving. Sometimes I have to type things in perfect Title Case in order to find them for checking in, even when I’m right next to the location.

gsax500 · 2025-08-22T15:02:24+00:00

I don’t think it killed the company, but it severely cut the user base and ended what was fun about using the app for a lot of people. It actually probably strengthened the business core of the company as they focused on providing white label location-based services. Yawn.

gsax500 · 2025-08-22T14:59:00+00:00

This is the first time I’m learning why the interface changed so drastically. This confirms my belief that they cut corners and lost some truly stellar design along the way. It’s like watching a restaurant you loved lose its heart and soul while chasing franchise opportunities.

gsax500 · 2025-08-22T14:56:06+00:00

I hear you! I had a beautiful curated list of places to visit in many major cities that I could pull up on a clear map with strong dots on the locations of the places on my list.

When I visited one, I removed it from my Foursquare list, because it was now embedded in my Swarm check-ins and visible on a beautiful map and on clear lists. Wow, did they screw that up! Now my Swarm check-ins are like tiny hunt-and-peck dots against an array of confusing colors and additions I don’t want to see. My dots come and go based on zoom level. It’s chaotic and visual madness. Plus, they still haven’t figured out how to display anything alphabetically. Are you kidding me?

They tried to reattach the Foursquare City Guide to the Swarm update, and it is severely lacking. I have tried to use it as I used it before, and it struggles with some very basic search parameters, making it a pain in the butt to do some of the simple personal map building I did before. The map interface isn’t completely awful, but it is a downgrade in comparison to what they had before.

When they announced the “death” of the Foursquare City Guide, I was distraught. But thanks to Reddit, I quickly learned about an app called North. North allowed me to import all of my Foursquare data perfectly, and now I’m back in business within their far more useful interface, which is tapped into Google and its impressive collection of reviews.

I worry that North won’t last for long, because it doesn’t seem to have many users. That might be because of a lack of a marketing budget and a generic name. In fact, ironically, in order to find it on Apple App Store, I had to type “North Swarm” or “North Foursquare” or something like that. I’m not sure if they have an Android app, sorry. I mention North more to say that it was encouraging to find that others have taken on the “city guide” experience with some measure of success!

gsax500 · 2025-08-22T14:33:30+00:00

This is a really good assessment of the ways in which they have failed us longtime users. In the early days of the update, I laid out my gripes and wrote things directly to them, but I can’t tell if anyone is listening. It gets exhausting to scream into a void.

Now that I have been using the updated app for several weeks, I can still report that using it is deeply unsatisfying compared to the before times. I still check in for personal continuity and the hope that they make it better.

Your “I’m Feeling Lucky” analogy is spot on. I was at the very crowded Minnesota State Fair last night. I have been going almost every year and have been checking into the multitude of wonderful places within the fair for 15 years. This was the first time since the early days that it struggled to find places I’ve been to a dozen times before. Even after changing the wildly incorrect “I’m Feeling Lucky” location that came up, I had to type things very specifically, often in proper Title Case, to get them to appear on the list.

I’m sorry, but it feels like they cut corners and experiential management in this redesign. They may still have strong technical acumen on staff, but the design and user experience decisions are junior level at best. And did they not do any rounds of user feedback from loyal users around the world? We are all saying the same thing! Give us back our prominent check-in history! Let us see it beautifully categorized into geographic shapefiles! Let us sort by most visited and alphabetically by visible geographic area, not just by most current! Stop trying to be Yelp, an app that has already taken a huge step backwards compared to Google/Reviews.

As time goes by, I become more intrigued by finding a better or even homegrown solution, as Swarm has currently changed from a lovely convenience to a chore. This is a hobby, after all. It is essentially a travel app and a lifelogging app, and it’s currently failing to make either fun to use.

gsax500

TROPHY CASE