Dennis Crowley is the man behind Foursquare, the check-in and food recommendations machine challenging Yelp as the de facto place to answer "what should I grab to eat?" Foursquare emerged at SXSW four years ago, and has since grown to 30 million users who have checked in over three billion times. What was once a cool way to see where your friends are evolved into one of the most important sources of data on where urbanites like to eat and drink. Crowley took some time to talk to The Verge about the ever-changing buttons of the Foursquare application, the data science behind its recommendations, and why push notifications can be an extremely tricky business.

Photo credit: Michael Shane
Video production: John Lagomarsino and Ryan Manning
Editing by: John Lagomarsino
Special thanks to Borrow Lenses, who provided us with cameras and lenses