Nowadays it is more important to know where users are than what they are doing when using social media. Twitter has released a new application called Local Trends which is a location-aware tweet function. This article looks at how Twitter will get more users using location.
The introduction of the Location-aware function marked the first step Twitter has taken to invade the hyperlocal niche market. The feature is still not used as much as Twitter would like and users still need to opt-in to use this function. The Trends API gave Twitter the opportunity for their developers to build a function into their applications that would filter trends according to specific locations around the world.
Twitter recently acquired Mixer Labs which makes use of the GeoAPI service which is a reverse geocoder. This means that it can use the actual location and change it to identify a particular physical location. Its database includes 16 million businesses and supports layers from Flickr and YouTube.
The next direction we think Twitter will be heading into is that they will start building their own LBS application. Users are now able to filter popular topics according to location. This is a useful feature as users can find out what is happening in their area. Now that twitter has geoAPI they are able to enforce more tweets around location but even more in depth than cities. With this data that Twitter has access to a “place check in” is possible. Twitter will now also be able to advertise to users according to their locations. There are many, such as Google, who are trying to serve local businesses. With the check in tweets and place data Twitter is able to advertise local interests.
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