Skip to main content

What did we eat most? Foursquare shares 2015’s most popular check-ins and trends

Remember Foursquare? The social network that popularized “checking in” has gone through various ups and downs since its launch in 2009, but there are still over 50 million monthly users. The popular mobile app used for discovering the best eating and drinking establishments anywhere in the world has mined its 2015 data to provide us a list of the top things we ate, drank, and saw throughout the year.

In its list, Foursquare notes the most popular mentions, ratings, implicit visits, and Swarm “check-ins” for each month of the year. For many, you can probably guess which events were most likely to draw us out of our homes. The day before Thanksgiving was the most popular Wednesday of the entire year for going out. Referred to as Pre-Game Wednesday, this night saw a 59-percent increase in bar visits when compared to the previous Wednesday.

Recommended Videos

There are some interesting findings, such as a 21-percent year-on-year decline in food truck visits between January 2014 and January 2015, but an increase in the popularity of “poke,” a raw-fish salad common in Hawaiian cuisine.

While Foursquare has always been a relatively popular mobile app for checking in and letting your friends and followers know where you’re hanging out, it faced some scrutiny in 2014 when it split itself into two apps — Foursquare then became Foursquare plus Swarm. The main app was intended to focus on location discovery, while the Swarm side was to manage social check-ins. As Nicole Lee noted in an Engadget article, many Foursquare users became frustrated and disappointed at the loss of “mayorships,” which allowed users to establish themselves as the mayor of locations they frequented. Although the app eventually brought back a new kind of Mayor game, users commented that it wasn’t the same, and didn’t really enjoy the thought of using two different apps for Foursquare.

However, with over 50 million active users in August, according to Venture Beat, it seems that the mobile app is still powering ahead with 2016 possibly being another big year. Also predicted to be big in 2016 according to Foursquare’s 2015 list? Latin American tastes: Mentions of Latin food staples such as cacao and coconut milk, as well as visits to Cuban, Caribbean, and Peruvian restaurants, more than doubled in 2015.

Christina Majaski
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Christina has written for print and online publications since 2003. In her spare time, she wastes an exorbitant amount of…
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more
Worried about the TikTok ban? This is how it might look on your phone
TikTok splash screen on an Android phone.

The US Supreme Court has decided to uphold a law that would see TikTok banned in the country on January 19. Now, the platform has issued an official statement, confirming that it will indeed shut down unless it gets some emergency relief from the outgoing president.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” said the company soon after the court’s verdict.
So, what does going dark mean?
So, far, there is no official statement on what exactly TikTok means by “going dark.” There is a lot of speculation out there on how exactly the app or website will look once TikTok shutters in the US.

Read more