and it’s telling your friends. twitter has “officially” introduced geotagging. when you send a message on twitter, the service can indicate where you were when it was sent. let me qualify: this afternoon, a post appeared on twitter’s blog announcing that the geotagging api (man, isn’t this no caps thing annoying) was available in “api-only” form. that means it won’t start showing up on twitter.com, but that developers can now continue to do what several were already doing, which is to incorporate geotagging functionality in interesting ways.
how does this affect todd
this is going to really mess up my foursquare logins. I have been in the habit of logging in to several locations I visited during the day at the end of the day. now I will have to log in from the actual location or people will know. and laugh.
the yawns of my non-twitter-using friends (and they are legion) are almost audible. “that’s great, todd. now your twitter friends will know exactly where you are while eating lunch. or getting gas. or the other exciting things you do with all that free time.” au contraire, my luddite posse. twitter offers up a few titillating ideas like “now you can find out…what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall.” tip of the iceberg. in your face, mom.
using the power for good
clearly twitter is depending on the developer community to figure out what-all people can do with this new functionality. I posted a week or so ago about my mind-blowing experience with foursquare – I anticipate more of this kind of geo-specific, personalized marketing. will marketers abuse the new functionality? some will, most won’t. those that do will find themselves blocked or unfollowed and on the business end of a shitload of negative pr. the best part is, we the consumers will be at the wheel of control. because we control what we see in twitter, on facebook and other social media hangouts.
remember, the geo-tagging feature itself will be opt-in. users will need to go into their application settings and say “yes! tell the world where I am every time I tweet!” below are some screen shots of how to access the settings to either put yourself out there or make sure the location of your secret lair is secure.
so I think it’s a good thing. if you don’t, don’t turn it on. but don’t come crying to me when I’m the one getting a free upgrade for my kid in the ball room at chuck e. cheese…
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setting geotagging options in twitter
hi, and welcome to the how-to portion of the post. first thing you need to do is get over to twitter.com site.click on settings at top right.
you’ll find the control on the first settings page, but you’ll need to scroll down a bit…
there’s the rascal. note that your location probably says something other than watertown. don’t freak out if it is where you actually are. that’s not geotagging – that’s the information you entered when you set up twitter (maybe). but I digress. the choice is yours.
photo credit: some matthew mcconaughhey fan on the set of ed tv.
