Twitter and Foursquare have both entered into a partnership that will tag specific location to tweets. The collaboration will bring the ability to tag specific locations to tweets via official apps and the web. The upcoming feature was tweeted on Monday by Tweeter, with a video showing how it will work in iOS, according to TechCrunch.
In the past, location services in Twitter worked by detecting your coordinates based on your device sensors and assigning a spot based on those parameters. With this new partnership, users will be able to tap the location button to get a list of places nearby that have been suggested. This will enable them to ID specific spot, according to TechCrunch’s Darrell Etherington.
“You can choose to add a location to your Tweets using Twitter for Android, Twitter for iOS, twitter.com or other mobile applications. For example: To give additional location context to your Tweet, you can add a general location label such as “SoMa, San Francisco.” In select locations, on Twitter for iOS and Twitter for Android, you may also label your Tweet with the name of a specific business, landmark, or other point of interest. These locations are provided by Foursquare,” said Twitter on its Support Page.
Last December, Business Insider had reported that Twitter was considering partnering with Foursquare on improving location in tweets. The report, which the Business Insider quoted a source, which it claimed was familiar with the story at that time has now seen the light of the day with today’s tweet confirming plans to tag specific location to tweet.
The Business Insider had in that post quoted a spokesperson for the microblogging company as saying:
“Our goal is to take those learnings and scale them to the rest of the world,” the Twitter spokesman stated. “There are two key components to nail: 1) Understanding where content is coming from and where the conversation is happening: a country, a city, a neighborhood or venue. 2) Understanding places you care about, whether that’s the place you’re standing when you access Twitter, your home country, or some place else on the globe that’s captured your attention. Organizing the world’s public conversations in real time can offer limitless opportunities.”
Foursquare’s data will now enable Twitter to tag tweets to restaurants, stores, and potentially landmarks; which was different from what we had in the past where users were allowed to tag tweets with general locations.
What’s in it for Twitter?
This new feature, when implemented by the microblogging platform could improve its monetization and advertising options. It will also help new users by providing them with tweets considered to be relevant before they build their own timeline.