14 DAY TRIAL // Location is becoming a big trend online, even though the technology and dedicated services aren’t exactly mainstream yet. But that is changing and Twitter’s latest announcement only helps. The microblogging site is launching a new location feature dubbed Twitter Places, which, as the name implies, enables users to associate a tweet with a place. Twitter has had a geolocation feature for a while, but it has only served raw data or a very general location.
Twitter Places is much more like what popular location-based services, Foursquare, Gowalla, have been offering, the possibility to ‘check into’ a place. Of course, with Twitter’s sheer size, this might spell doom for dedicated services like the two mentioned. But Twitter is actually working with them and check-ins from both Foursquare and Gowalla will show up as places on Twitter.
“When turning to Twitter to keep up with the current game, it helps to know where a Tweet is coming from,” Twitter wrote. “To help answer that question, we're excited to announce Twitter Places on twitter.com and mobile.twitter.com. Starting today, you can tag Tweets with specific places, including all World Cup stadiums in South Africa, and create new Twitter Places. You can also click a Twitter Place within a Tweet to see recent Tweets from a particular location,” the announcement also read.
The feature is now going live on Twitter.com and on the mobile site. Once it’s enabled for everybody, which will be in about a week’s time for 65 countries, tweets with geodata will have a place associated with them. Of course, that’s only useful if Twitter has a large-enough database of places. Fortunately, it partnered with TomTom and Localeze, so it should have a pretty complete coverage of the entire world. You can also add your own places.
One of the interesting use-cases for the new feature, apart from seeing exactly where a tweet is coming from, is that you’ll be able to search for tweets and Foursquare and Gowalla check-ins for a particular place. Twitter says the new feature and geolocation in general are now working in most browsers, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Developers will also be able to tap into the new feature through an API, completely expected for Twitter.