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There's this relatively recent feature (since autumn 2012, I think) that venues have a score, apparently in the 1-10 range.

I mean the "8.7" in this screenshot:

enter image description here

...and the "8.1/10 People like this place" here:

enter image description here

Now, foursquare doesn't allow users giving any numeric venue ratings. What you can do is "like" and "dislike" a venue (along with saving them to lists, writing tips, and checking in, of course).

Also, from what I've seen, liking venues is relatively little used feature and I'm quite sure that a score of 8/10 doesn't mean that 8 out of 10 people who checked in also liked the venue.

So, my question is, how exactly are users' likes (or other actions) converted into the venue score?

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It's (vaguely) explained in a blogpost by Foursquare. It's not magic like they claim, but a combination of all the 4sq metrics: likes, check-ins, tips, loyalty, etc., in order to have a better evaluation algorithm.

It would surprise me if the actual algorithm is known publicly, though. So my answer is: "unknown", unfortunately.

Update: blog post linked above has been (re)moved. An equivalent article about place ratings is available on Foursquare's support site.

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  • Thanks, especially for linking to an authoritative source! I sort of suspected it's like this: some (undisclosed) combination of metrics. – Jonik Dec 3 '12 at 12:08
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    some more info on : quora.com/Foursquare/…. Answer from: Andrew Hogue, head of big data @foursquare – Geert-Jan Dec 4 '12 at 12:53
  • Blogpost link is broken. – Gan Jun 3 '14 at 11:35

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