The City of Brussels wants to be a pioneer in the digital innovation at the service of its citizens. That's why on the initiative of Karine Lalieux, the Alderwoman of ICT, the City just created its page on Foursquare, the social network of geolocation. It is the first official page on this social network managed by a municipal administration in Belgium.

What is Foursquare? If Facebook says "what I like and what I do" and Twitter expresses "what I think", then Foursquare is the equivalent of "where I am". In this way, Foursquare indicates the interesting places nearby and those visited by your friends. It looks like a "Social City Guide": a little guide co-created by the users, with their recommendations.

The City of Brussels is henceforth "an owner" of 70 pages listed on Foursquare about the buildings of the City (museums, libraries, municipal buildings). By its status, the City ensures the reliability of the information on Foursquare. "The objective of this step is to ensure a quality information and an update of the information on this social network. On Foursquare, the users can advise certain places and create them if they don’t exist yet. By managing the pages of buildings connected to the City of Brussels, we watch over the fact that this information is reliable, thus avoiding disappointment of the visitors", says Karine Lalieux, Alderwoman of ICT at the City of Brussels.

By giving advice (tips), the City can suggest other places that are likely to interest the visitors. This offers an interactive and functional information to the users of the application.

Foursquare is above all a mobile application. It allows its users to find places of interest in the surroundings by means of geolocation. It is thus mainly intended for smartphones. Far from being a simple gadget, it allows its users to find the available activities in just one click. The application also allows the users to express their opinion on the place.

Although Foursquare is a relatively modest social network in number of users compared to Facebook or Twitter, it unmistakably offers a supplementary service to its users as well as a first interesting information for the persons who want to discover the City of Brussels.

 Let us remind that the City of Brussels is also present on Facebook and Twitter where it possesses more than 1.700 friends (Facebook) and more than 2.200 followers (Twitter).

In order to download the Foursquare application on your smartphone: