Twitter is moving into Foursquare and Gowalla’s territory. CEO Evan Williams just announced at Chirp that it is starting to add places as a geo-location feature. Twitter turned on geo-location for developers last November, andbegan playing around with map features on Twitter.com itself last month. Currently, geo-tweets contain the lat/long coordinates, and can be identified by city or neighborhood. But Twitter will start matching them to actual places so that if someone is Tweeting from a specific place, such as the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, users will be able to see other Tweets from the same location. Twitter is calling these Points of Interest.
While Ev didn’t mention it on stage, it is likely that Twitter is creating its own directory of places, probably through its recent acquisition of Mixer Labs and its GeoAPI. Once you Tweet from a place, that is not much different than checking in, which is what you do in apps like Foursquare or Gowalla.
John Battelle, who is acting as an MC at the Chirp conference, asked Ev if Twitter is going to introduce checkins. Ev responded that wasn’t the current plan: “We are not looking to duplicate the functionality of Foursquare and Gowalla. When you are tweeting about a place, it is kind of a checkin, but we are more interested in the content about that place.”
Of course Foursquare and Gowalla and other location apps will be able to use Tweets about places in their apps through Twitter’s APIs. But still, if you can Tweet where you are, why would you check in? People looking to avoid check-in fatigue might just stick with Twitter.
Read our full Chirp coverage.
Created in 2006, Twitter is a global real-time communications platform with 400 million monthly visitors to twitter.com, more than 200 million monthly active users around the world. We see a billion tweets every 2.5 days on every conceivable topic. World leaders, major athletes, star performers, news organizations and entertainment outlets are among the millions of active Twitter accounts through which users can truly get the pulse of the planet.
Foursquare is a geographical location based social network that incorporates gaming elements. Users share their location with friends by “checking in” via a smartphone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can connect their Foursquare accounts to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which can update when a check in is registered. By checking in a certain number of times, or in different locations, users can collect virtual badges. In addition, users...
Gowalla is the leading Social Guide to the world’s most loved places and cities. Its award-winning mobile app and website — paired with an ever-growing collection of socially-powered Guides to cities, parks and regions across the globe — as curated by the Gowalla community and experts like Disney and National Geographic — make it easy for friends and families to share and discover photos, experiences and recommendations on the go. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Gowalla was launched in 2009 and...
Created in 2006, Twitter is a global real-time communications platform with 400 million monthly visitors to twitter.com, more than 200 million monthly active users around the world. We see a billion tweets every 2.5 days on every conceivable topic. World leaders, major athletes, star performers, news organizations and entertainment outlets are among the millions of active Twitter accounts through which users can truly get the pulse of the planet.
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