DISQUS

EJ · 3 months ago

Glad this is opt-in.

Brad F. · 3 months ago

Stalkers everywhere are rejoicing and looking for a fresh pair of undies.

youthroll · 3 months ago

Do we really want people knowing our exact locations?

Ben Parr · 3 months ago

If I am at a conference and want to know exactly who's there, this new feature makes it much easier. Same if I visit a new city,or I want to organize a tweetup. There's an opt-in too.

People Search · 3 months ago

True. There are some good arguments for adding location information to tweets. As long as there is an opt-in or out option for users.

Stephen Ratner · 3 months ago

Right, I agree. I've used ubertwitter at conferences before and it's good for situations like that. Happy there is an opt-in.

Keep up the good work, Ben!

rikin · 3 months ago

Makes alot of sense for conferences as there would be no need for hashtags to follow. Simply follow by address/location.

geechee_girl · 3 months ago

This could be bad news for safety reasons for some people. I hope they make it OPT OUT by default for people who are not computer savvy enough to find their settings.

Ben Parr · 3 months ago

Opt-in usually means it's not activated until you manually activate it.

geechee_girl · 3 months ago

Yes I know what it means. ;) I should have typed "CLEARLY opt out", thinking of the average, non-computer savvy user. Remember the See All @ Replies debacle? A highly useful, favorite feature that was also set to off and yet still caused a stir because that wasn't clear, and so we all lost a fantastic feature.

andy09 · 3 months ago

Ben,

We're one of the most used geo location based Twitter user Directory, but we never even get a mention? What's the deal.

Gefollow will continue to innovate and with the addition of location to users and tweets we will build an even better offering.

Michael Bauser · 3 months ago

As a Twitter user, I have to say: I have no idea what directory you're talking about. That should give you some insight into why you're not worth mentioning.

andy09 · 3 months ago

Well I've never heard of you, so should I completely disregard what you have to say? No not at all, just because you don't know about it doesn't mean that it's not worth mentioning. Did you hear about Mashable as soon as it came out? Though, I appriciate the comment...

barkerja · 3 months ago

Not just you guys, but what about mentioning the other location-based services already out there, say Brightkite for example. If Twitter added inline photos/comments they'd be Brightkite.

David Haddad · 3 months ago

Great news. Thanks for covering this guys!

Michael Bauser · 3 months ago

I like the idea (which is why I have a Brightkite account), but I have to wonder how many Twitter users want such a feature. Complicating Twitter with high-end features like this, while neglecting features users have asked for (like better spam control) seems a little misguided.

Kelsey · 3 months ago

Exactly. I don't want people knowing my exact location! That's creepy.

Jo · 3 months ago

geo tracking will never take off in social sites. I along with most people I know don't want everyone knowing where we are. If they did, services like Latitude would have been a big success by now.

Kwame Kuadey · 3 months ago

Wow that's pretty incredible that you will be able to see the location of anyone tweeting.

http://giftcardrescue.com

Barbara Ballard · 3 months ago

We've been playing around with this idea for a while, and think the lat-long location as context is of minimal value for many folks, and is a major security problem for others. lat-long won't become useful until it's translated into other data.

We actually proposed a more human-friendly version: named places. For now, human-name them. And don't add a location unless it adds context.

"Office", for example (we're using ^office), is a perfectly good location. My family and coworkers know exactly where it is, and it provides very good information to them. My mother doesn't know where it is, but it provides context anyhow. "Starbucks" is also a good location: who cares which Starbucks I'm at?

Here's a writeup (posted a couple hours before Twitter's announcement) with a link in it for more details:

http://www.littlespringsdesign.com/blog/blog/20...

barkerja · 3 months ago

What you just mentioned is exactly how http://brightkite.com does it. I suggest you check them out!

Bill · 3 months ago

I really hope that you can opt out, I'm not sure if I want to give away my real location at times.

Gaby · 3 months ago

I can see how it will be a useful feature. I won't use it and even knowing I won't I still get creeped out at the idea other people will post their location up. I think it's fine if people are sensible about it, like only post their location if they're going to/ are in a public place, but there's a fair few people out there who would go "ooo, cool feature *opt-in*" then forget about it.

cooper · 3 months ago

My concern would be that the net is already a fertile ground for stalkers, and that this could be dangerous and at the very least annoying for some I too am glad it's opt in.

modemlooper · 3 months ago

how bout we get twitter to work first.

eltonlester · 3 months ago

given 65% of users are still posting via the web how 'real' is this location going to be?

Calyx Moon · 3 months ago

It's a cool idea if you're on the go & want everybody to know, but maybe Twitter could arrange this so users can on off this feature at every tweet, therefore giving more flexibility for us & not be worrying about getting ourselves discovered when we least want to.

Melissa Moore · 3 months ago

Great news. Looking forward to the launch.

Off topic a bit, but where can I go to get all the "share this post" buttons?

Cris · 3 months ago

I can see how this would be useful. I certainly hope they consider an option that only makes your location visible to your followers. And I like Calyx's idea of being able to flag whether you want to tweet your location with each tweet. Sometimes you might not want even your best friend to know where you are. If it's not super simple it's going to get messy.

Trigeia Twins · 3 months ago

not sure if we love it or hate it. Now we really have to really watch what we say! Here is another take on this same issue http://www.trigeia.com/article.php?id=80388

Craig Foster · 3 months ago

Will this Force Executive's Hand? http://bit.ly/htjzo

GrowMap · 3 months ago

Deleted accidental dup comment.

GrowMap · 3 months ago

Hopefully they will ASK where people are and not just guess. Most geo-targeting is less than accurate. What business reason is there to use latitude and longitude instead of allowing us to indicate our GENERAL location? Rarely does anyone have a legitimate reason to REALLY know more than a metro area (DFW, Austin area, central Texas, etc.).

Keeping it optional will also be important to many who sell online and don't want to be limited to one location and to others who do not have any desire to make finding out where they are every minute any easier than it already is.

taulpaul · 3 months ago

Half the people saying they don't want people to know their location are probably checking in on Foursquare daily. This is huge on so many levels, even if the opt-in rate is 10% of all users.

rubert · 3 months ago

great, now I can give the whole world my exact location. Perhaps I should also just post my address and telephone number everywhere I can think of too?

Melanie Notkin · 3 months ago

Huge privacy issues here... I highly doubt any woman has ever written a geo-locator app. This is why I didnt like Brightkite and don't play Foursquare. Yes yes I know you can turn things off and optin/out... but I don't even want to think about it.

hafiz · 3 months ago

Looks great if it can attach by location..Need to find out

dcfemella · 3 months ago

I'm already using UbertTwitter, Google Latitude, and BrightKite, so this will pretty cool.

Arijit Das · 3 months ago

Nice idea to attach locations on the Tweets!!

Ben Lang · 2 months ago

cool twitter is really improving

mneu · 2 months ago

I think this has interesting business applications for SMB's once developers start working with it, because the majority of the people they are interacting with are locally based

Jerry Zambrano · 2 months ago

My biggest question/concern with the new API is after opting in, whether the GeoLocation is gathered from user input of personal location? Or does this application take one's location directly from a user's IP address. The latter seems more intrusive and can open the door for exploits in my personal opinion. My IP address is as sacred to me as... the knowledge of what brand underwear I use (LOL).

sleepygirl · 1 month ago

I like the idea of being able to find others in your local area, or the ability to search by City or location if you're visiting a new area, however, EXACT location? I see huge safety and privacy issues with that.