My girlfriend likes to know where I am during the day so she can surprise me by showing up, and suggested I use “Swarm” to check in to places as I go. I downloaded the app, but can you tell me how to use it?
Ah, Swarm. Formerly known as Foursquare, and formerly super popular. What you don’t know about the company history is that they used to be quite the trendy app with people using Foursquare all over the place to check in, become “mayor” of venues and even get bargains and deals through the app. I can recall the glory days when being mayor of somewhere (which meant you checked in more than anyone else for a given time period) translated into free food, drinks or other stuff. Was very cool!
Then for reasons no-one knows, the company decided to split its app into two pieces: Foursquare would become the app that let you explore venues in your area, and a new app called Swarm would be the location check-in app. That went really badly and most everyone just quit, though having zero benefit to being a mayor seemed to happen at about the same time too (they let go the ad sales team?), so perhaps that was also a contributing factor.
In any case, I am actually a die-hard Swarm user, though what used to be a constant wave of check-ins from friends has slowed down to barely a trickle. I just use it to keep track of my own locations and because, well, I keep hoping it’ll come back to life and be a thing again. It certainly works just fine, without the extreme visibility of Facebook location check-ins.
But Swarm’s pretty darn easy to use. Let me step you through how I checked in to The Laughing Goat, a popular coffee house in Boulder, Colorado. First, launch the app and you’ll see your friend’s checkins:
You can see that the most recent check-in was Frank, Woodstock Square with Jen. In Illinois! That’s a long way away from Boulder, that’s for sure.
The middle button along the bottom is the check-in button, so tap on the orange map location marker with the arrow (I think that’s what it is, at least!). Now Swarm will figure out your location and offer up the most likely match as a direct check-in venue:
You can see that it correctly identified me as being at The Laughing Goat (on the very top line). But what if that’s not the right place? You can choose from nearby venues by tapping on the “Change location” button on the top.
Zeal, Iris Body Piercing, Beat Book Shop and Pivotal Labs are all super close to me, within 100 feet. But hey, I’m at The Laughing Goat, so that’s where I’ll check in, by tapping on its entry in the list.
Swarm has a concept called “stickers” and that’s what you see along the top. The very first one has a “2x” meaning it’s a double-points sticker if you use it. Did I mention that you get points for checking in to places and are competing with your circle of friends for most points each week?
In this instance, I’ll choose the sticker by tapping on it – why not get double points? – and add a quick comment that it’s not as busy here at The Goat as usual. Ready to check in? Tap on “Check In”.
These vary by venue, of course, but you can see that Eric Magnuson is the “Mayor” of The Laughing Goat, but that I’m only 1 check-in away from taking over. Note that you generally can only check in to a place once/day to get credit (so you can’t just sit somewhere and check in twenty times to become insta-mayor). I also got a sticker bonus, 25 points, placing me a paltry 18th out of my 42 friends.
If there’s a tip for the venue, that’ll show up once you swipe these info windows away:
Jud’s tip is accurate, the outdoor seats are a great place for some people watching!
And that’s it. Easy, fast, fun, and all y’all need to just join up so we can make it popular again. 🙂