What Twitter Places Means for the Future of Location
Despite the bungled launch and short hiatus, Twitter Places is back in action. The feature has huge implications for the geo-location space and the location-sharing movement.
Places is a big improvement on Twitter’s () previous geo-location offering, which was never widely adopted or embraced by the majority of users. Whereas before users had to adjust their settings and agree to posting every single tweet with their geo-coordinates, now Twitterers are presented with an elegant way to attach a place to their tweet, one tweet at a time.
)Right now Places is a Twitter web and mobile experience only, but soon developers will integrate the Places API into their applications and services. Only then will we see Twitter Places reach its full potential. If Twitter can fix the issues crippling the service, then Places has the power to turn location-sharing into a mainstream behavior and significantly boost interest in applications like Foursquare () — not to mention the monetization potential of location-based ads.
1. Location-Sharing to Become Mainstream
As trendy and hip as Foursquare may be, it’s still only reaching a small subset of the online population. While Facebook (
) — due to its size and reach — is the most mainstream of the social networks, Twitter might have the best chance at making location-sharing a common behavior.Twitter is still the primary purveyor of real-time information and news, and location needs real-time visibility to thrive. Location-sharing amongst friends is certainly well suited for Facebook’s purposes, but the value of location supersedes knowing where your friends are.
Just two years ago, Twitter and its 140 character updates seemed silly, if not absurd. Now everyone from all walks of life including athletes, politicians, celebrities and media are tweeting. Location-sharing — via applications that use geo-location to tie locations to places for the purpose of letting users broadcast where they are — is prime for a breakout moment. Twitter can help take it there.
The tweet has proved to be a powerful and revolutionary way to communicate and spread information. Add location, in the form of places, to these messages and we could see a surge of interest.
Places add context to tweets, which means that breaking news — whether it be related to a natural disaster, event, conference or other situation unfolding in real-time — flowing out in the form of tweets can be localized for further value. It’s this context that will finally help location-sharing holdouts understand why location matters and how they could benefit.
2. Boost Interest in Geo-location Apps
As it stands, Twitter is not a threat to location-based social games like Foursquare and Gowalla (
). In fact, it’s a complimentary service that will positively impact user uptake.Given that Places integrates with both services, users of Foursquare and Gowalla have double the incentive to continue updating their friends on their whereabouts. Checkins from either service are tied to places on Twitter, which means those updates get sucked into the Twitter Place feeds/streams.
Checkins will also have broader reach on Twitter via the Twitter Place page, which means more exposure for Foursquare and Gowalla. More exposure will translate into more users who checkin more often, and so on, and so forth.
Plus, as location-sharing becomes more accepted, users will begin to appreciate the added values that Gowalla and Foursquare bring to the table. Saving money — whether that be at Starbucks, Domino’s or Sports Authority — is something that never gets old.
3. Promoted Places
With Places, Twitter has an opportunity to serve up highly targeted advertisements in the form of Promoted Tweets.
Ads could appear atop the Places tweet stream — a.k.a. search results for tweets at a particular place — and engage Twitter users with specific messages about a locale. Obviously this a feature that brands like Starbucks — an early Promoted Tweets user and Foursquare early adopter — could use for store-specific promotions or messages. Perhaps there’s even a “Promoted Places” product brewing that will function similarly to the new Promoted Trends feature.
“Promoted Places” may just be a projection at this point, but we are quite certain that Twitter’s current fixation on advertising revenue will extend to Places.
[img credits: MariShelbey and courtesy of iStockphoto (), jorgeantonio]
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