Location: The New Feature
The folks at Twitter recently announced an upcoming feature that will make Twitter truly location-aware. (Read: Location, Location, Location) While the details are still coming, the basic idea is that folks will have the ability to geo-code their tweets. Geo-coding will make each individual tweet a mark on a map. If you have geo-coding enabled and you tweet, “I’m at such and such a restaurant”, Twitter will code that tweet with the actual latitude and longitude of that restaurant.
This is cool because, as they write:
[W]ith accurate, tweet-level location data you could switch from reading the tweets of accounts you follow to reading tweets from anyone in your neighborhood or city—whether you follow them or not. It’s easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake.
The Happn.in Philosophy
We applaud this move by Twitter. Happn.in started with the idea that Twitter had reached an unmanageable size; and without the ability to filter Twitter by something other than numbers, Twitter was becoming mostly useless
We are not claiming to have moved the Twitter mountain towards location; but we are excited that the Mt. Twitter is moving in the direction we think is useful and interesting.
As we said in our previous post, “to become truly, sustainably useful, Twitter needs tools that organize and filter its information based on criteria other than size.” By adding geo-coded tweets, Twitter has created some strong material from which to build those tools.
The Impact on Happn.in
When it goes live, geo-coding will give us at Happn.in better, more accurate local trends. Currently, if you have your location set to Austin, but are tweeting from a concert in Houston, we have to ascribe your tweet to Austin. In the future, if you’ve enabled geo-coding, that tweet would be counted as a Houston conversation, making Happn.in a more accurate representation of Local Twitter Trends.
But possibly more importantly: we have ideas. Oh, do we have ideas. We have been thinking about how location plays into Twitter for a while now, and this allows us to go big. While I will not lie to you and say we have several geo-coded features ready to release, I can say that we are very interested in using Twitter as a local broadcast and conversation tool; a way to make your city or town better and more connected (check out the conversation bar we’ve set up in Austin). Obviously we don’t think getting everyone on Twitter makes a town better (that would be a weird thing to think); but we do think making local conversation easier can’t hurt.
(Via Waxy.Org.)
about 1 hour later:
I am in Portland connected to my corporate headquarters in San Diego. Given that, it’s possible that my location will appear to be in San Diego rather than Portland.
This isn’t a show-stopper or anything, but it is a potential issue. Maybe they’ve worked this out, but if not it’s worth considering.
about 9 hours later:
This is certainly newsworthy and I thank you for this post. The ramifications are endless. You’re post suggests this is optional. If so will it be coded in the background anyway for tracking?
2 days later:
Heya Dave,
The feature will be turned off by default, and you’ll have to enable it if you want your tweets geo-coded.
And if you haven’t enabled it, your location won’t be kept (even in the background).