Twitter is the king of social media, a micro-blogging wonder that has swept the world leaving even the most ardent sceptic interested in how such a simple concept has become so addictive to such a large number of online users. Twitter has now acknowledged the launch of a new Geo-Tagging feature that will allow accounts to be filtered by location. Is this the beginning of a more community based Twitter experience? Could Twitter communities be based around local areas?

Twitter is adding an easy to use Geo-Tagging option to all Twitter accounts. Users will be able to update their location via an API. Developers will be able to tag latitude and longitude coordinates to all posts allowing real time, location based blogging.
“We’re gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information. “ Wrote Biz Stone on the Twitter Blog.

I think what is particularly exciting is the possibility of generating real time opinion based content, which is not only current and user generated but also is based on a location. Imagine the possibilities, trending public opinion based on location, country and subject, simply amazing. The main issue is Privacy. Twitter have addressed this with the option to enable the service from within the user settings and all accounts will have the service turned off by default.

Potentially Twitter could bring back the voice of local communities, a modern day equivalent of a town meeting place. We have lost a key element of social living which made the UK great, maybe social networking could potentially reintroduce the concept of localised communities?

We will have to wait and see what amazing mobile applications are launched on the back of this new service. You have to wonder, will Google Latitude come into the equation and is this the first sign of a Twitter Google collaboration? We will have to see, but the prospects are very exciting.

Article by Creative SEO