There are big changes happening at location-based social media Site Foursquare. For one, today, it announced that it had split into two apps – Foursquare & Swarm.

The announcement was made some minutes ago on its official blog post. Giving the logic for the split, the writer said it had been observed that each time a user opened the app, it was almost always do just one of those things – search for a place for dinner, & after dinner, probably look to see what friends nearby were up to.

Here’s what the post said further: We built Swarm because you’ve told us how often you still have to text your friends: “where are you?” and “what you up to later?” We wanted to build a quick way for you to know these two things for all of your friends. With Swarm, you can easily see which of your friends are out nearby, figure out who is up for grabbing a drink later, and share what you’re up to (faster and more easily than you can in Foursquare today). Swarm will be available on iOS and Android in the coming weeks, and soon after on Windows Phone, but you can read a ton more about it (including screenshots and some videos) on The Verge right now. If you sign up at swarmapp.com, we’ll email you when it’s ready.

It does not end here. Foursquare said it was “going through a metamorphosis” & woud be shifting focus soon to a delivery-based version which would be made public soon. Local search today was like the digital version of browsing through the Yellow Pages but those at Foursquare believe local search should be personalized to the users’ tastes. Also, the opinions of actual experts should matter, not just strangers.

“An app should be able answer questions like ‘give me a great date dinner spot’ and not just ‘tell me the nearest gas station.’ We’re right now putting the final touches on this new, discovery-focused version of Foursquare to be released later this summer.”

Image Credit: Foursquare

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