Silicon Alley Insider is reportingthat very soon Twitter will be able to deliver the precise geographical location of every twit who’s tweeting. It makes sense. Many people tweet from implements that have some GPS feature built in. It’s not hard to see how the right software could deliver precise whereabouts of each individual twitterer. This information might not be evident to recipients of the precious information that Lenny is about to take a shower. But Twitter Central will know.
I don’t know about you, but that seems to me to be one less reason to tweet. I think this places me well outside the digital mainstream. Most people on the leading edge of personal communications don’t appear to care. We already have cell phones that can tell anybody with the proper equipment where we are and we don’t think much of it. Now there will be a private company with high book value and absolutely no earnings that will be able to market our locations as well.
Proof of this attitudinal shift may be seen in the jolly tone of Dan Frommer’s report in the Alley. He writes:
Twitter has already built a great service to track what people are saying in real-time. But knowing where they’re saying it could be even more valuable. So as Twitter continues to build out its product, adding location data to tweets will be an important move.
The good news is that Twitter seems to be moving in that direction. For instance, the company has recently hired a new member for its platform team with a background in location services: Ryan Sarver, who most recently worked at Boston-based Skyhook Wireless. That’s the company whose wi-fi-based location service powers Apple’s iPod touch and helps out on the iPhone, among other gadgets.
Funny, isn’t it? One man’s paranoid nightmare is another man’s exciting new development.
I agree with you. Why should/would Twitter Central care about where I am as I tweet? Unless someone reads my tweets and knows where I am can they possibly market to me. Even then, what is the likelihood of someone reading and/or clicking a advertisement.
If they roll out such a service, it will definitely cause individuals to use pseudonyms and be more careful about giving out location and personal information. Granted there is a portion of the population that won’t care but it sounds to me like “Big Brother”.
It’s a really bad idea. Assuming that this is designed as a revenue generator, it will fail like most internet based advertising. They should just charge for the service instead.