Foursquare took advantage of new smartphones like the iPhone, which had built-in GPS to better detect a user's location.

[7] In May 2014, the company launched Swarm, a companion app to Foursquare City Guide, that reimagined the social networking and location sharing aspects of the service as a separate application.

This version removed the check-in feature and location sharing, instead focusing on local search.

Major features include local search and recommendations, tips and expertise, tastes, location detection, ratings, lists, superusers, brands, and Places API.

The new program allowed companies to issue messages to Foursquare users about deals or available products.

Businesses could also incentivize mayorships through rewards for users who were the mayor (such as food and drink discounts).

[22] "Specials" were another feature of the app that acted as an incentive for Foursquare users to check in at new spots or revisit their favorite hangouts.

In May 2014, the company launched Swarm, a companion app to Foursquare, that migrated the social networking and location-sharing aspects of the service into a separate application.

Check-ins are rewarded with points, in the form of virtual coins, and friends can challenge each other in a weekly leaderboard.

[32] Most recent statistics show Foursquare with approximately 55 million monthly active users.

The app's "explore" function now allowed users to browse locations by category or conduct specific searches like "free wi-fi" or "dumplings".

[36] On August 7, 2014, the company launched Foursquare 8.0, a new version of the service which removed location-sharing and check-in features, pivoting to local search instead.

[39] In March 2010, a privacy issue was observed for users who connected their Twitter account to Foursquare.

[40] Later in 2010, white hat hacker Jesper Andersen discovered a vulnerability on Foursquare that raised privacy concerns.

[41][42] Foursquare's location pages display a grid of 50 randomly generated photos regardless of their privacy settings.

[42] In 2011, in response to privacy issues regarding social networking sites, Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai stated that "Users decide if they want to push to Twitter or Facebook, over what information they want to share and send" and "There is a lot of misunderstanding about location-based services.

[43] On May 8, 2012, Foursquare developers changed its API[44] in response to a number of "stalker" applications which had been making the locations of all female users within a specific area available to the public.

[45] In late December 2012, Foursquare updated its privacy policy to indicate it would display users' full names, as opposed to an initial for a surname.