Today, people in the US with phones running Windows Phone 8.1 will have a new way to experience Foursquare recommendations.  Now, based on your location, Cortana will proactively showcase local recommendations from Foursquare on the Cortana home screen, along with your other interests. [To turn on the feature, pull up Cortana’s notebook go to Interests, look for “best nearby” and then toggle to ON]

Cortana talks on your behalf to the Foursquare service in the cloud and gets the best recommendations for your location and time of day.  If your interest is piqued by a particular recommendation, you can click on it and Cortana will open up that location on the Foursquare app where you can explore more about the place. In the event that you do not have the app installed, Cortana will take you to the recommendation in the Foursquare web experience.

This is another example of how the Bing platform is making Microsoft services more personal, helpful and intelligent. Instead of you having to manage multiple services and apps, the Bing platform processes the places and events around you delivering the information you need at the right time. This is another step to make the world’s most popular services available to people on Cortana via the Bing platform.  Stay tuned for more in the coming months.

–          Elan Levy, Bing Platform Team