Twitter’s update field queries the user with “What are you doing?” Now you can add “where are you doing it?” to that field, without having to say anything. Twitter has now made geo-location services available on the site, continuing its build-out of new features. Datamation has more.
Say this about Twitter, the company and its army of outside developers keep finding ways to maximize the content you can pack into the 140-character limit assigned to every tweet. For example, hash tags (#) (define) make your tweets more easily found by Twitter search engines, while URL link shorteners, like Bit.ly, TinyURL and a host of others, let you include otherwise long Web links in the messages.
Now Twitter has added geo-location.
“A recent burst of interest in location-sharing applications, games, and services has many Twitter users excited about appending geographic data to some of their tweets,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a blog post announcing the new feature.
Addressing the privacy concerns that typically accompany geo-aware services, Twitter said the feature is turned off by default and must be activated by the user. When users do opt-in, a map of their location can be seen next to their tweets, though users can control what’s shown and turn the “Tweet With Your Location” feature off at anytime. By default, a general neighborhood location is shown, but users can also choose to show their exact street location. Users can also clear their location before they tweet and delete past location data with single click.