Twitter Nov. 19 released its geotagging API to programmers, but users won't yet be able to access location-based services from the Twitter.com Website. The feature, which allows users to selectively annotate their tweets with their exact location and provide more context to users about their surroundings, has been implemented on Twitter applications such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid and Seesmic Web. Creepy? Perhaps, but likely only to someone who wouldn't opt in to use such a service in the first place.
Twitter Nov. 19 released its geotagging API to
programmers, but users won't yet be able to access location-based services from
the Twitter.com Website.
The feature, which
allows users to selectively annotate their tweets with their exact location and
provide more context to users about their surroundings, has been
implemented on Twitter applications such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid and Seesmic
Web.
To protect users' privacy -- not everyone wants everyone
who is following them on Twitter to know where they are -- users must opt in by
going to their
Twitter settings page and clicking "Enable Geotagging." The settings
page also includes an option to let users delete all historical location data
from their tweets 30 minutes.
Twitter even
updated its privacy settings to cover the geotagging base. Twitter's Geotagging API engineering lead Ryan Sarver
explained in a
blog post:
"The added information provides valuable context when
reading your friends tweets and allows you to better focus in on local
conversations. Now you can find out what live music is playing right now in
your neighborhood or what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today
about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall."
Twitter executives, who yesterday also
shifted the
company's goal from letting users tell each other what they are doing to letting
them answer what's going on, are obviously ecstatic about the geotagging
feature because it enables Twitter users to add context to, well, what's going
on.
Imagine a friend is out Christmas shopping on 7th Avenue
in New York City. She sees a pair of shoes that she loves. She can tweet about
the shoes, mentioning the store's name, and the "where" of where she found the shoes gets answered after a fashion.
Friends who follow that
Twitterer won't have to ask which store location she was at. They'll
see exactly where she is. Serendipitous discovery evolves into sharing.
Creepy? Perhaps, but
likely only to someone who wouldn't opt in to use such a service in the
first
place.
Geeks are also giddy about the geotagging feature, noting specifically the opportunities on
the application development front this feature will afford them. In the best
post on Twitter geotagging, ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick
explained:
"Want to know when you're near a certain type of public
event, great wine shops or deals at Macy's? How about when friends, close
friends or friends-of-friends are near? It's not hard to imagine a bot that you
subscribe to on Twitter, that then auto-subscribes to you, notices when you
"check in" at a new location and automatically sends you a reply when
whatever or whomever you're interested in is near that location."
Twitter isn't the only social networking service with
such designs. For its Google Latitude location service on Google Maps, Google
launched location history so users can see where they've been and when.
Privacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation
are
experiencing acid reflux over this snowballing trend of location-aware
services.
Fortunately, providers such as Twitter, Google, Loopt and Brightkite
have been very careful to implement provisions to preserve users' privacy. And
it all starts with opt in. If people don't want to be tracked digitally, they
don't have to use the services.
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