How are Foursquare venue “scores” calculated?

Question

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:

...and the "8.1/10 People like this place" 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?

Answer 1

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.