Twitter just announced that it has plans to launch a feature to make it location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any specific tweet.
“Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time,” says Co-founder Biz Stone. “However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.”
“For example, 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,” he explains. “It’s easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake. There will likely be many use cases we haven’t even thought of yet which is part of what makes this so exciting.”
Twitter will release geolocation to web developers and web designers first. So look for this functionality on various Twitter-apps before finding it on the site.
Twitter seems to be stepping it up in the way of usability. They also recently announced plans for retweet capabilities.
Source: webpronews.com
