That is precisely what Google did do the first time they bought them, as Dodgeball.

There are almost no badges in the new app, useless coins (at least if you could upgrade your badges with them as back in the day).. I fail to see how it's the same "fun" as it ever was. I have a few friends that still use it religiously, one day I plan on thinking deeply about what these people have in common because on the surface they seem rather random -- some are technologists, some aren't; all of them are 30+.

I think there is a _lot_ to be done in the field. As with anything these days it would most likely require a large effort with sizable investment, but I think it's an area that's grossly overlooked.

I still use it and I'm well over 30. I can't speak to your friends, but I like the history of where I've been. I love driving and finding new places -- at least, back when things were open, remember when there were cafés and stuff? -- and, on the flip side, I (used to) go out to eat for most meals and could fall into regular patterns, and sometimes checking Swarm to remind me that, yes, I had been to such-and-such place twice already this month could kick me into trying something new.

Making the coins utterly useless irritates me, though, and I'm kind of surprised they dropped the whole notion of partnering with businesses to offer specials to regular customers they had in the pre-Swarm days. While I presume they pivoted into selling location data because the partnerships just didn't make them enough money, I'd hope the partnerships weren't losing them money, and I think they really drove usage.

> but I like the history of where I've been

This is kinda the deep down reason I still use it. I sort of passively compete with the friends that use it, especially when I'm traveling, since I get to check into a ton of new stuff. The list of friends that use it is _very_ static. It's been the same group for _years_ now, w/o a single new person (and I don't think anyone's dropped). We're not close friends either. All in all, it's a fascinating experience in that regard.

I hadn't thought about that, but my experience is the same: no discernible changes to my Swarm friends in years.

Same here. The Venn diagram of people I follow on Swarm and the people I've communicated with in the past five years doesn't overlap at all.

Sounds like a solution to a first world problem, no wonder they've become a bygone.

>useless coins

A dozen or so members of my family use Swarm just as a casual "look where I am"/"look what I'm eating" thing, but I just cannot fathom what they were thinking with the evolution of the coins thing. Currently, the only thing you can do with coins is buy multipliers that... get you more coins? Wait, what's the point again?

> one day I plan on thinking deeply about what these people have in common because on the surface they seem rather random -- some are technologists, some aren't

I've had the same thought. I'm a software engineer in my 30s and I still use it religiously. I have a few friends who still use it, too. They are a high school teacher in his 30s, a project manager in her 30s, an attorney in her 40s, and an audio engineer in his 30s.

Isn't that weird? My group is similarly all over the map like that. One of my friends has been traveling the world non-stop for years now, it's interesting to see all of the places he's been to (although now he's been to most countries multiple times). I'm into software too; a couple of my friends who use it are too, but some of the others aren't.

I follow a couple people who seem to check-in compulsively despite never doing anything very interesting. Like busstops and gas stations. Some of them even check into their own houses on the reg. I think some of them may be using automated check-in tools.

Badges and coins were never the fun part for me. I just wanted a list of places I had been, and recommendations based on that. That takes two apps now, but other than that nothing has changed.

I never used the original app, but use the new FourSquare for discovering food after Yelp grew increasingly anti-user (both consumers and businesses). Makes me cynically wonder how FourSquare is screwing us over.

For a while now, friends and family have been relying on me for restaurant recommendations whenever they travel. Foursquare is my starting place and I then use Infatuation and Yelp written reviews (not their star ratings) to narrow things down.