Foursquare’s Visual History Will Make You Check In Again

Mayor map Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired

Social media and human tracking service Foursquare is beautifully serving up your check-in history.

Foursquare introduced a novel way to see your check-in history today. Its Time Machine site begins with your first check-in (probably your home or workplace) and proceeds to animate your check-ins on a map using connecting lines and pretty glowing circles.

When the process is finished, you have a visual representation of your wanderings, showing how often you’ve strayed into certain districts in your town. The map shows that, although I don’t live in San Francisco’s Mission district, I absolutely love the burritos found there. You’ll also be presented with stats on the types of businesses you frequent. Mine has lots of taquerias and pizza joints. You can download and share an infographic showing your Foursquare history, which may or may not be a good idea depending on how often you visit the local bar.

If you want to savor your check ins, instead of pressing the play button, you can click the right and left navigation arrows for a more detailed walk down Foursquare memory lane. Even if you’re not using the Foursquare app, the social network has been adopted by many other social apps including Vine, Path, and Instagram to power its location tagging system.

If you’re a heavy Foursquare user, this tool makes all those check-ins worth it for visual appeal alone. If you’ve stopped using Foursquare, this just might get you back on the path to reclaim the mayorship of the local Bánh mì shop.