• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 15, 2014

Trying to regain its footing after a tumultuous year, Foursquare on Monday debuted an app tailor-made for Apple’s iPad.

“It’s focused on helping you plan smarter,” the company said in a blog post. “Choose your city, and you’ll get a personalized list of all the great places there.”

The new app also includes a new section, which adds top user picks by geographic area. The feature suggests places that are newly popular and up-and-coming, as well as local mainstays. “It also has suggestions for travel destinations,” according to Foursquare.

It’s been a wild year for Foursquare, which made the drastic decision to divide itself into two distinct apps. One is named Swarm that does what people have long associated with the Foursquare brand — like letting you check into physical locations and become the “mayor” of local establishments — and a more Yelp-like service, which took the Foursquare name.

To distinguish itself from Yelp and other digital directories, the company baked personalization features into its new Foursquare app.

The official Foursquare app also got a new logo, which changed from the check-in checkmark to what the company described as “a mix of [a] map pin and [a] superhero emblem."

The changes marked the beginning of what Foursquare called the “personalized local search” future, which it is continuing with the launch of the new iPad app.

Still, user response to Foursquare’s big changes have been mixed. In late October, Foursquare ranked #923 overall in the U.S. App Store -- a huge decline from its rank of #44 in 2011, VentureBeat recently reported, citing data from comScore, App Annie, Google and Foursquare.

Foursquare was also recently called out for deciding to track users' locations by default — even when its app is turned off -- and then drawing on that data to send recommendations.