Twitter knows where you are
Twitter has bought a company which produces location tracking software. It believes the deal will allow it to find new ways to use geographical information to enhance its service.
The firm it has bought, Mixer Labs, already produces a series of tools named GeoAPI which incorporate Twitter information. They include a tool which takes the coordinates attached to Twitter posts by some mobile devices and then translates them into street addresses, and a tool which can combine messages posted from a particular location with pictures posted to Flickr to produce a real-time stream, for example by the organizers of a public event.
With Twitter’s central theme currently being that users answer the question “What’s happening?” (replacing the previous “What are you doing?”), it’s selling this deal as meaning the question could now be “Where is it happening?” It then gives the example of a post reading “Earthquake!” being more effective with the location automatically added. That’s certainly a striking example, but not one most users could identify with.
Twitter may get more out of the deal in the long-run than acquiring the new technology. By buying out Mixer Labs, it’s sending a signal to developers that if they come up with some good ideas to enhance Twitter through a third-party app, there’s a chance they’ll be able to cash in on those ideas. That may encourage more firms to look at ways of building on Twitter’s service, which in turn may mean more people sign up or make more use of it.
The firm also says it hopes to make the technology acquired in the Mixer Labs deal available to other developers who produce Twitter-based applications which incorporate geographical information.
For a topical example of such an application, check out the U.K. Snow Map. It asks users to tweet when they see snow, along with a rating of severity, then uses their location details to produce a real-time map of conditions across the country.
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