Because ten cameras are better than one

Foursquare has always been about not just where you are, but also who you’re with and what you’re doing. That’s why we show who you were with on your history page, and it’s why you can add shouts and pictures to your check-ins. But until now we’d never combined the ‘what you were doing’ and ‘who you were with;’ it was hard to get back to all of the photos your friends took at an event. So how to remember that restaurant when your distressingly flash-less iPhone 3GS couldn’t take a picture in the dim light, or the critical moment during the birthday party when your baby nephew put his pants on his head?

As luck would have it, we recently had our first internal hack day at foursquare HQ (we took a day off from our main projects to play around with ideas to make foursquare better). We worked on a ton of different things, and the first thing to make it out the door is a way of seeing all the pictures your friends took, right on your check-in detail page.

It works wonderfully for parties, elaborate brunches, and things like concerts. More context and photos for your memories. And, when your friends look at the same screen, they see their mutual friends who were there with you, and those people’s photos, too. Everything in one place. We’ll continue to hack at things to make improvements, but wanted to point this out so everyone can more easily enjoy their memories.

– Kushal Dave, engineer