Foursquare Crowd-Sources Best Of 2012 Lists For 30 Cities

While Foursquare may only seem like a check-in app that you use to tell your friends how jealous they should be, the service also allows users to review restaurants and other attractions just like on Yelp, and give it a 0-10 rating. Today, Foursquare has released the "Best of 2012" list that chock full of the best places to go in a given city, crowd-sourced by the users themselves.

While there are a ton of similar lists floating around the internet, Foursquare's lists are quite unique, and the company says that while other sites' lists are based upon the editors' opinions or food critics, Foursquare rounds up the billions of check-ins that they have to see what the most popular places are in town.

The company uses tips, likes, dislikes, popularity, local expertise, and nearly three billion check-ins from over 30 million people around the world to determine how popular and good a certain place is. However, Foursquare has only made Best Of lists for a handful of cities in the US, including Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco, and more.

What's perhaps most interesting about these lists, is that Foursquare discovered that certain cities have unique tastes in food: "Bostonians love seafood, Portland is a veggie paradise, and Philly may be the city of brotherly love, but what they really love is a good sandwich." Clicking on a city reveals the best restaurants in the area, as well as the best nightlife destinations, and attractions.