The magic of foursquare discovery, now on your big-screen devices. #new4SQ

NOTE (Tuesday, 1:30pm EST): This will be going live over the next couple of days. Hope you enjoy it! Now live for all! Enjoy!

As foursquare has evolved, the focus has turned from simply ‘checking in’ to sharing our experiences and expertise, unlocking rewards and deals, and exploring the world around us. And, though we spend a lot of time improving the app for your phone, we know that sometimes the best place to do those things is when you’re visiting the website from your computer. In the next couple of days, we’re rolling out the #new4SQ at foursquare.com, with a huge emphasis on discovery.

The first thing you’ll notice when you load up foursquare.com is a big map on the top (you can click on the arrow to make it even bigger). It shows everything interesting nearby – your friends, places that are trending (in yellow), places on your lists (green), places with Specials (orange), and places that are popular (blue). You can even drag the map around or zoom in and out and all the interesting places update automatically. Try dragging it around to see how it works.

And, to make sure it’s useful every time you visit, we also pull out a few results that are perfect for what you want to do next. Load it up at 11:30 and we’ll start suggesting great lunch spots nearby, and in the early evening we’ll switch to places for dinner. On Saturday afternoon, we’ll show you some great weekend activities. We’ve been testing this at foursquare HQ for a while, and love checking it for new ideas before we go out.

And it doesn’t stop there. While we’re loving what you all are doing with foursquare Lists, we thought it would be nice to build some tools to help you, you know, find lists. So we built List discovery, with both search and visual recommendations. Now, before going on a trip, you can search for the best restaurants or sightseeing spots in that city, or just find some great new stuff to do in your own city. Instead of searching for a single place, find a guided tour. Tap into the expertise of the nearly 15,000,000-strong foursquare community. And, if you’ve turned Radar on, we’ll alert you when you’re near one of them.

The last thing regarding discovery: place pages got a total face-lift. We get over a million people a day checking out our website for info on a restaurant or museum, and there’s a better representation of photos, tips, and information. It’s cleaner and much more useful, with more of what people are looking for.

Of course, it’s not just about discovery, it’s about introducing an entirely new visual language to foursquare. Built on top of a solid grid foundation with cohesive and consistent style, this new design will allow us to expand and launch new user-facing features more easily and quickly. Read more about it on Sam’s blog (he’s our lead designer for the web). Here are some of the more noticeable changes:

• You can now comment (and see comments) right on the homepage.
• Looking for celebrities or brands to follow? We present some you may like on the right of the homepage.
• When your friend checks out your check-in detail screen, it now shows your points (a much requested feature!).
• Because we built this all using modern web standards, it looks awesome on other devices, like your shiny new iPad.
• Photos are bigger and prettier.
• And, well, all of our most important screens got a makeover and we’ve got more in store. Poke around and look through all of it.

The new site also makes it a lot easier for us to launch new features in the future. So enjoy the new site, and stay tuned for more!