Location based check-in app, Foursquare has updated its Android and iOS apps with the ability to check-in your friends when you're out together.
It's worth mentioning that the app already offers the functionality to tag or mention friends. The new update implies that only one of the two or more friends needs to open the Foursquare app to check-in the others.
The updated app includes an 'I'm with' option at the check-in prompt that lets users add their friends by choosing their names from a list. After that, the friends will get a notification asking for permission to let the user check them in. If they approve, they'll also get checked in otherwise their names would just appear as a mention. It's worth noting that if the user's friend(s) approve the permission once, the user will be able to check them in even in the future without requiring another approval. However, they'll be able to delete check-ins that they don't want at a later stage.
The new functionality is especially helpful when you have a large number of friends in a group checking-in at a location. A single person can check them in though each one in the group would need to approve the check-in the first time it's done.
Interestingly, a third party app,
Here With Friends, that connects with Foursquare through an API, has already been offering this functionality. So it would now be redundant as Foursquare has integrated this feature.
For the uninitiated, Foursquare is a 'gamification' driven location based app that encourages users to check-in at different locations in order to earn points, get badges and mayorships and compete with friends, and also share places of interest and reviews contributing to building meta-data around specific places.