Foursquare Launches Windows 8 App

Social check-in service Foursquare on Wednesday launched a brand-new app for Windows 8, the company’s first official app that goes beyond the phone.

The app works on a range of devices, including Microsoft Surface tablets, as well as other slates, laptops, and desktops running Windows 8. When developing the new app, the Foursquare team focused on making it a powerful search and discovery tool and put those capabilities front and center, Foursquare’s David Ban told PCMag.com.

“We have this amazing search and discovery algorithm called Explore, which we think is pretty much the best recommendation engine you can get for contextual, personal-based recommendations,” Ban said. “This app is a showcase for Explore and our recommendation engine.”

That recommendation engine, he said, “bakes in all the 4 billion check-ins we have at this point,” and takes into account a number of factors, such as the time of day, how many repeat visits a venue has received, and what’s trending at the moment.

At this point, Foursquare has around 35 million members, and recieves 50 million unique visits a month on its website, according to Brandan Lewis, Foursquare’s head of communications. While Foursquare is best known as a tool for checking in to venues, a growing number of users are leveraging the service to research places to visit.

“We are becoming, increasingly, a destination for people to look for things to do,” Lewis said.

Foursquare first announced plans to launch a Windows 8 app during Microsoft’s Build developer conference back in June. Several other popular apps have recently made their way to the platform, including the restaurant reservation service OpenTable(Opens in a new window), social-networking browser Rockmelt(Opens in a new window), and music-streaming service Rhapsody(Opens in a new window). Facebook is also working on a Windows 8 app.

For a look at some of the features in Foursquare’s new Windows 8 app, check out the slideshow above.