Swarm, which is a spin off of the popular location app Foursquare, has seen a pretty big update today. After getting mayorships back recently, Swarm has now made the app more of a “lifelogging” app. Where the app uses the app data from your phone to see where you spend the most time. It uses check-in data to build a much richer history of places you’ve checked into. Now Swarm already makes it so that it knows where you are and will ask you if you want to check-in. For instance, if you pull up to Qdoba and don’t check-in, you’ll get a notification asking if you want too. Now Swarm will get all of the data from check-ins and make a comprehensive history of places you’ve been. This will give you a much more detailed insight of where you spend the most time.
In this update, we have “Weekly Swarm” which is a feature that will keep you up-to-date on everything that your friends are doing. As noted by the name of the feature, it will show where your friends have been in the past 7 days, while you’ve been busy slaving away at work (to put food on the table of course).
The Profile tab, which has been redesigned slightly, you will see visit streaks which are streaks of visiting a particular place. You’ll also find numerical and graphical breakdown of your favorite check-in spots. Swarm is effectively showing you where you spend the most time. It shows you the most popular places all time as well as recently. The global map is still there, however it is now hidden behind your profile picture, and will show everyone where you’ve been.
It still may not be enough to get everyone using Swarm. Foursquare and now Swarm, have been met with skepticism from a lot of people due to the fact that you are letting the whole world know exactly where you are. Making it much easier for strangers that you don’t know, to come and possibly kidnap you. Although the social web has definitely improved that opinion in recent years, so platforms like Foursquare and Swarm have gotten more popular. You can download the update to Swarm from the Google Play Store today.