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Twitter platform developers are 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. This new feature 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. It’s easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake. There will likely be many use cases we haven’t even thought of yet which is part of what makes this so exciting.

A similar service like Foursquare which aim to help people find new ways to explore the city, and meet up with your friends, discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people. If this technology comes true on Twitter, it will make people closer physically. It’s potentially powerful stuff.

Google: Broadcast Your Location To Friends

But Twitter is hardly the only big player entering the location arena. Google has made a series of moves recently to show its support of location-based computing going forward. None is bigger than its Latitude service which is a location-based social network that shows you where your contacts are. And Google also recently introduced location support for Google Maps and the mobile version of its search engine, so if you search for something like a restaurant on your iPhone, it can know where you are and serve up a result close by.

Facebook versus Twitter saga

It’s interesting to note that Facebook has yet to introduce anything involving location yet

Unlike Google, Facebook’s primary purpose is to be a social network where you keep track of friends. Twitter has tens of millions of users, Facebook has over 250 million users, so how they would react to something like location will be interesting.

Reference:
Twitter Blog
TechCrunch