Earlier this spring, Twitter announced it would soon be adding location-based information to tweets.
Typical of what we like to think of as the company’s “mysterious charm,” the feature has been unveiled six months later with a brief post on the Twitter blog. The new geotagging capabilities can already be seen in certain third-party apps and might even come to the web interface sometime soon.
To activate the new hotness, Twitter users must go to their Settings pages and click “Enable Geotagging.” For obvious privacy reasons, the feature is not automatically enabled.
Apps such as Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro, and many others are already supporting location-based data for tweets.
“The added information provides valuable context when reading your friends tweets and allows you to better focus in on local conversations,” writes Twitter platform/API man Ryan Sarver in the blog post.
“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. These are only the beginning and we are really looking forward to seeing the creative uses emerge from the developer community.”
As are we! But we might hold out on enabling the geo-tastic feature just yet. We’ve still got a few stalkers to shake, and we’re waiting for the inevitable bugs to surface before we trust our favorite microblog with our favorite haunts, too.
