Foursquare Launches New API

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We reported Yesterday that Foursquare had surpassed 5 million subscribers. Today it has made its new API and now the developers have access to it. The new version “APIv2″ has been fine tuned by the start ups. The focus is on speed, consistency and clarity.

However the new API drops the support of XML so that the server expensive. OAuth2 is going to make it easier and more secure for users to log on to third party services. So it is now easier to help users in fetching user badges, venue histories, and venue popularity. The Foursquare states

The foursquare APIv2 gives you access to all of the data used by the Foursquare mobile applications, and, in some cases, even more. Integrate checking in or viewing checkins into your application, build tools to help users use or visualize their own history, experiment with new ways of displaying badges, leverage our uniquely rich information about venues or do things we haven’t even thought of yet.

The new foursquare for Andriod released a few days ago features the new API in action. Earlier companies like Instagram and Gowalla tapped into its API for enhancements like integration of location of rival services.