Come 2013, user information on Foursquare will be a bit more open to public, according to an email addressed to all users regarding their latest privacy policy update.
Currently, Foursquare shows the user’s first name and the last initial when looking in notifications or news feed (except for user profile) but from January 28, 2013, users’ full names will be displayed all across the service. Not just this but venue owners will have increased access to checked-in user’s data and not just limit the access for the previous three hours.
Treading on a delicate line here, Foursquare also published a carefully-worded document called as Privacy 101 to explain the updates and changes in its various policies and features.
Currently, a business using Foursquare (like your corner coffee shop) can see the customers who have checked in in the last three hours (in addition to the most recent and their most loyal visitors). With this change, we’re going to be showing them more of those recent check-ins, instead of just three hours worth. The bottom line is that we understand how important privacy is to you. From the beginning we’ve been working hard to build a range of robust privacy controls into the Foursquare experience to give users control over the amount of information they share about their location. – Foursquare
The year 2012 was great for Foursquare, introducing fifty new features, adding nearly 15,000,000 new people and zooming past the 3,000,000,000th check-in.
