Foursquare's new bot feeds you restaurant recommendations
Foursquare is once again trying its hand at personalized restaurant recommendations.
The company launched a new app Tuesday that uses a chatbot to surface personalized restaurant recommendations. Called "Marsbot," Foursquare is testing the app with iPhone users in San Francisco and New York City.
The goal of the app is to provide recommendations that are both personalized and proactive -- so rather than simply messaging the bot when you are looking for a dinner spot, the app will text you suggestions when you are near locations you may like.
You May Also Like
"Our goal with Marsbot is to give you the answers before you even ask—just based on where you are and where you usually go," Foursquare Product Manager Marissa Chacko writes on Foursquare's blog.
The app draws on both your habits and -- unsurprisingly -- Foursquare's data to make its suggestions. It "pays attention to your habits and learns about the places you go," according to the App Store description.
While it's not clear exactly how it's learning about your habits, the app does ask for location services to be enabled and your location history would obviously be a big factor in making recommendations. Chacko notes that Foursquare is uniquely positioned to provide these types of recommendations because of the huge amount of data Foursquare has.
In fact, the premise of Marsbot sounds a lot like the recommendations of Foursquare's flagship app, which also uses your location history to make proactive suggestions about the places you visit. Those recommendations can be almost eerily precise -- the app can detect whether the coffee shop you just sat down in is a place you frequently visit or if it's your first time there, for example -- so the premise of Marsbot certainly has potential.
Marsbot is available now to iPhone users in New York and San Francisco, though it currently has a waitlist to start using the app. (Foursquare says it will open the app to waitlisted users "slowly.")
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
