Geolocation coming to Twitter

Stephen Withers
Friday, 21 August 2009 06:01

Your IT - Home IT

A new Twitter feature will allow an exact geographical location to be associated with a tweet.

A new API under development for Twitter will make it possible for applications to add latitude and longitude to any tweet.

Users will need to opt-in to the new capability, and - presumably for privacy reasons - Twitter has already announced that the exact location data will not be stored "for an extended period of time".

It is likely that the initial use will be in mobile Twitter applications running on devices that have built-in GPS hardware to provide the location, but Twitter has announced its intention to support geolocation for tweets sent from its web site.

Twitter founder Biz Stone said "with 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," he added.

No indication was given of a likely release date for the geolocation API.