Foursquare, is it a game, or is it an app? Apparently it started off as a location-based mobile game that pioneered the check-in, but now I’m not sure what it is anymore. Foursquare is now an awesome app for people who want to be stalked, or show off to all their friends where they’re going. Surprisingly this stalker-happy app has already been on the business for two years now, and the company has officially rolled out Foursquare 3.0.

“Our theme internally has always been that every checkin counts,” says co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, who speaks of version 3.0 as the materialization of that philosophy.

The new release turns on the power of every checkin accumulated over the course of its two-year history and transforms that data into recommendations. This will be over at the new Explore tab, which sits where the Tips tab once was. Here’s users can query for recommendations or dive into food, coffee, nightlife, shops and arts and entertainment recommendations served up by Foursquare and ranked by what’s most interesting to the user.

Of course, this is somehow related to the next new feature, which is the merchant feature. There will soon be seven special types available to merchants: Check-in Specials, Friend Specials, Flash Specials (e.g. the first 10 people to show up after 5 p.m. get a free drink), Swarm Specials, Newbie Specials, Mayor Specials and Loyalty Specials. Foursquare will reveal more details in the days ahead, but the startup is introducing these new special types to respond to merchant demand. Version 3.0 supports the new special types and also finally allows application users to browse all nearby specials in the Places tab.

Next would be the American Express Partnership with Foursquare. It’s a sort of pilot program with American Express that offers cardholders automatic savings when they swipe their cards at 60 participating merchants in the Austin, Texas area. The new automatic credit card swipe AmEx specials are supported in version 3.0. The main idea, says Crowley, is to remove friction from redeeming merchant rewards. Foursquare users need only register their American Express cards and tap to unlock the special in the app. The “spend $5, save $5” credit is then automatically applied to the cardholder’s account when the credit card is swiped by the merchant. However, this is only a short-term tryout, as this event only runs from March 11 to March 15.

SOURCE via Foursquare