Starting today, you’ll start seeing updates in your friends tab from the places where you’re a loyal customer. It’s an easy way to keep up with news from places you frequent, including things like new specials, pictures of the latest shipment of shoes, or a serendipitous food truck appearance. The best part is there’s no extra work for you to do: we already know you care about a place if you’ve checked in often or liked it, and will show you updates from it when you’re in the same city. If you change your mind and don’t want updates from a business any more, you can turn them off with one tap.

Also, when you look for places in Explore or when you check in, you’ll see these updates on the page – kind of like the chalkboard where a restaurant writes its daily specials. For example, when you’re on Northern Spy Food Co.’s page, you’ll see their recent update about their latest seasonal drink.

To see what these look like in action, check out some of the businesses that have started sharing updates. Some are national chains, like H&M, Togo’s Sandwiches, Outback Steakhouse, and Wolfgang Puck. Some are universities on foursquare, like University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of South Florida, Duke University, Texas A&M University, Indiana University-Bloomington, and Boston University. And some are local New York favorites, like Luke’s Lobster,  New York Public Library, NYC Parks Department, and Northern Spy Food Company. Are you a loyal customer? If you want to see these updates when you’re in the same city, like them.

If you manage a place on foursquare, this will all be available to you later this week (for free!). We’ve also hit a pretty amazing milestone – there are nearly 1,000,000 businesses claimed on foursquare. Want to join them and get access to all the free tools to reach your loyal fans in our 20,000,000-strong community?Get started now!

“If you’ve opened up foursquare in the last couple weeks you’ve probably noticed that we made a ton of changes. We re-imagined the entire app, Extreme Makeover style, to make it even easier for you and your friends to share and save your experiences and find new places to go. We also gave it plenty of design love and under-the-hood tweaks, so it’s not only prettier but faster than ever – hurrah!

Here are just some of the things we’ve improved:
• We’ve streamlined the app down to three simple tabs.
• The friends tab now has big, swipeable photo slideshows, and shows things like tips, lists, and more check-ins. We’ve also added the ability to quickly ‘like’ and comment on activity (yay!).
• The Explore tab now shows friends nearby and gives you personalized recommendations for nearby, before you even search.
• You can now add a bio to your profile tab, plus see stats, scroll through your foursquare activity, and more.
• Checking in is faster! Just tap the top right button, no matter what tab you’re on.

Still haven’t taken it for a spin? Download the app for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry!

In addition to updating our app, we’ve also updated our Privacy Policy to reflect the evolution of foursquare (and hopefully make it easier for you to understand). For example, since we added ‘likes’ to foursquare (those adorable tappable hearts that sit below every check-in and tip), we added a section that talks about that. We also put in a section for Explore (learn more about Explore from our previous blog posts and FAQs here, here, and here); it explains how we use check-in data to find you the best Mexican restaurant when you search for ‘tacos.’ Most significantly, it details when, where, and how many prior check-ins your friends can see (for instance, on the friends tab, Explore results, and your profile tab). We also removed some parts of the Privacy Policy; for instance, we no longer have ‘shouts’ in the app, so we removed that section.

We hope you enjoy #allnew4sq! Have fun exploring!

-team foursquare”

From here click the Join Now button.

From here you can sign up using your Facebook account or you can signup by email. We will be covering how to sign up by email so click Sign Up By Email.

Fill in your details on the form. Make sure to enter a valid email as you will have to verify your account.

The next step Foursquare will check who of your friends on Facebook, Gmail, Twitter or Yahoo are already on Foursquare and let you join them. You can skip this step if you wish to do this later.

You will now be given the option to download the Foursquare App for you model of phone. They of course cover the top 3 iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. But they have the app available for many different handsets.

The next step it will go over some of the options you have with your account. You can link your account to your Facebook and Twitter accounts so you have the option of sharing your location with your friends and you can also post comment this way.

Your account is now setup. You will use Foursquare nearly 100% of the time on your phone. So get out there and start checking in, Leave Tips for your friends and getting some great special offers.

Foursquare is a location-based mobile platform that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. By “checking in” via a smartphone app or SMS, users share their location with friends while collecting points and virtual badges. Foursquare guides real-world experiences by allowing users to bookmark information about venues that they want to visit and surfacing relevant suggestions about nearby venues. Merchants and brands leverage the foursquare platform by utilizing a wide set of tools to obtain, engage, and retain customers and audiences.

foursquare by the numbers (last updated April, 2011)

• Users: Over 8 million worldwide, adding around 35,000 new users each day
• Check-ins per day: Over 2.5 million, with over half a billion check-ins in the last year
• Businesses: Over 250,000 using the Merchant Platform (more information atfoursquare.com/business)
• Employees: Over 60 between headquarters in New York, NY, and a satellite engineering office in San Francisco, CA