Foursquare used their blog Tuesday afternoon to announce their all-new iPad experience. 9To5Mac tells how Foursquare, the popular location-based social networking web site, is focusing on HTML5, and how a well-written HTML5 app can give a user experience that’s as good a native app.
As well as providing the features from their native iPhone client, they also added new social discovery capabilities optimized for mobile devices. In your Safari browser on your iPad, load foursquare.com and login. You’ll then see a map showing your friends, trending places (yellow), places from your list (green), specials (orange), and popular sites (blue).
One feature, List Discovery, allows you to search for a venue visually, and enjoy tours of spots built using crowd-sourced knowledge. The redesign includes revamped pages, commenting, and bigger photos. Also, places on the map show content based on time of day.
The Foursquare blog post explains:
To make sure it’s useful every time you visit, we also pull out a few results that are perfect for what you want to do next. Load it up at 11:30 and we’ll start suggesting great lunch spots nearby, and in the early evening we’ll switch to places for dinner. On Saturday afternoon, we’ll show you some great weekend activities. We’ve been testing this at foursquare HQ for a while, and love checking it for new ideas before we go out…
The new site also makes it a lot easier for us to launch new features in the future. So enjoy the new site, and stay tuned for more!