Foursquare, Inc. announced Monday that mayorships are back in their geolocation check-in app Swarm.

The feature, one of the original features of Foursquare before it pivoted into a places to visit recommendation app, allowed users who checked into places to earn “mayorships” if they had checked in the most times at that location.

The game within the service was high popular with Foursquare users, with people competing with friends to see who could be the mayor of favorite locations, along with the boasting rights over who had the most mayorships.

The feature did originally appear in Foursquare’s successor app Swarm, but then was unceremoniously dumped under a bizarre belief that users were tired of the feature, despite the fact for many if was one of the most enjoyable things about the app.

Never one to concede they are wrong, Foursquare made the announcement without referencing the fact that they had originally dumped the much-loved feature, instead spinning that the returned mayorships are apparently more fun because it lets users compete against everyone.

“When we first launched Swarm, you fiercely battled your friends for a chance at a Mayor crown. But it just wasn’t as much fun” a post on the Foursquare blog reads. “That’s why today we’re upping the ante and letting you compete for mayorships against everyone.”

Changes

The new Swarm mayorship program, along with allowing users to compete against everyone (to the best of this authors memory, they could before, but anyhow…) has lowered the bar for mayorships from 2 check-ins in 30 days to only one check-in.

Within the app itself the mayorships can be viewed via a diamond shaped icon at the top of the app; note though users are required to update the app to have the mayorship viewing option appear.

It is a welcome return, and for those who still use the service, it will definitely get them checking in more often, but as we wrote when Foursquare first announced mayorships would be returning, it still may be too little, too late to save the app given that it lost many of its loyal users when it abandoned badges and mayorships in the first place.