Twitter to Release Geolocation API

Twitter has announced that they will be releasing a new API that will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet.

Currently most Twitter / map mashups use the account-level location field in people's profiles. For example, the well known TwitterVision map animates through Tweets that are geo-tagged by the location entered in each Twitterers profile setting.



Currently there are some crude work arounds to updating your location via Twitter. Some iPhone applications let you change your profile location directly from a Tweet. On the other hand some Twitter Maps allow you to define a location from your tweet by adding a hash tag entry. This is the approach taken in Ben Marsh's excellent #ukhols Google Maps mashup, where users can add a hash tag followed by their post code (zip code equivalent).

The problem with both these approaches is that they both require users to waste some of their valuable 140 characters in defining the location. So Twitter has been crying out for a location API.

Twitter say that they are releasing the geolocation API to platform developers before they add the feature to Twitter.com. It is therefore likely that you will first see the new feature in third party applications before it is added to Twitter.com.

Via: The Next Web

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