Location is in Twitter’s DNA

Feb23

by Chad Catacchio

Bookmark and Share

dna 500 300x195 Location is in Twitters DNAYesterday Twitter released some usage statistics, saying that users produce 50 million tweets per day, or about 600 per second. That’s up from 2.5 million tweets a day at the beginning of 2009 (and 5,000 a day in 2007). So even though Facebook has many more active users, Twitter is producing quite a lot of content – and if you look through the eyes of location, they are currently blowing Facebook out of the water in geo-content. While geolocation enthusiasts have at the same time lamented the sorry state of geo-tagged tweets while remaining hopeful, we still see Twitter as the most logical platform for social location sharing to thrive.

It’s just built that way

Twitter was founded on the concept of short status updates and has evolved as a tremendous way to share links and communicate. This is exactly how we predict that the location space will evolve – status updates (checkins) to link sharing (deeper detail on location-based info) and location enhanced communication. Since this structure is already in Twitter’s DNA, it will be easy for the service to scale and build out location features, as well as being a natural fit for users already familiar with Twitter’s genes.

Twitter isn’t cluttered

What is more simple than saying “I am here”? It is short and precise, two things that are also in Twitter’s DNA. Yes, you can add a Twitpic or stream on Qik or share any number of other things through Twitter, but all of that boils down to a link (and a short one at that). This lack of clutter is probably why – contrary to seemingly common sense – Twitter, and not Google Maps, will end up being the platform for the social location graph.

Tweets are Meta

Way before the geo-API, TwitterVision showed everyone how immensely interesting it was to see people from around the world tweet. The tweet itself is data and can be mapped, regardless of what the tweet is about. Of course, however, location is about hyper-local, so geotagged tweets open up an entire new realm of applications that are more than fun to look at, but are actually useful. We suspect that the most successful applications will work to enhance the streams of users with location in as unobtrusive a way as possible – i.e. they will make tweets better.

So don’t worry that less than 1% of tweets are presently geo-tagged. Once developers (or maybe even Twitter itself) start using location to make tweets better, that 1% (or 500,000 tweets per day right now) will quickly rise as users start to see tangible benefits.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Facebook, Twitter, location. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Hi, Chad - good post and couldn't agree more. In a recent report on Location-based Innovation (http://bit.ly/9ugm2M), we concluded that "Twitter recognizes the rare strategic opportunity and has signaled its intent to be a winner in the fierce battle for location-based assets."

    Here are a few additional excerpts that support your view:

    1. Microblogging is spreading for a number of reasons:
    · Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have made it easy, even for novices
    · Yelp, Foursquare and other new social media apps have developed engaging, compelling experiences for their users
    · The abbreviated format (140 characters for Twitter) makes it easy to post an update or share a comment from a mobile device.
    · New, more user-friendly mobile devices make it much easier to update one's status, submit short posts and share photos.
    · Content posted on social media sites is proving valuable to users for a wide range of purposes, from staying in touch with friends to tracking news topics, choosing restaurants and many others.

    2. Many social media updates refer to locations — where the individual is, has been, or is going; what they’re doing; etc. — as well as experiences with places — "having a great time," "crowded — not worth the wait," etc... As a result, Twitter (and others) are racing to ensure that content produced by mobile users is geotagged and can be found. Mining the insights in these posts and making them accessible... is also creating new opportunities for location-based apps.

    3. Re: Geo APIs - Connecting the Dots for Developers... Twitter's acquisition of Mixer Labs in December 2009... will make it much easier for developers to access and integrate a wide range of location building blocks into their mobile apps.

    Happy to send addit'l insights from the report, if interested.

    Dr. Phil Hendrix, immr
  • meme
    first time i visit on twitter sounds interesting
  • I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think the fact that Twitter updates are public by default make location-sharing tricky at best. Am I going to geotag one of my tweets with the location of my home? Not likely. I think this is why the adoption rate has been so sluggish. I think the Facebook model, where the usual case is that you're only sharing your updates with "friends," makes much more sense in terms of sharing one's location.
  • Well, I think that if you wish to have a discussion around your neighborhood, you certainly could geotag your tweets from home to enhance that discussion. I think that there is a misconception that location equates to "on the move". Where a user lives is a vital part of their lives, so it makes sense that social location services should work just as well - if not better - from home.

    As far as Facebook goes, I very carefully considered whether Facebook is a more logical choice for social location (I also write for www.insidefacebook.com btw), and after that consideration, I believe that Twitter is just closer to how we feel location will continue to evolve. Facebook can certainly build a vibrant social location graph, but honestly, how often do you post anything on Facebook that you wouldn't post on Twitter (ok, maybe if you have kids you don't put their pictures on Twitter)? Many people have hundreds of Facebook friends - in fact, for the vast majority of users right now, they probably have more Facebook friends than Twitter followers. That said, are you really "friends" with all of those people on Facebook? If you have over say 150, I would say almost certainly not - there will be a lot that aren't "friends", but are acquaintances and perhaps even strangers. So sharing location on Twitter isn't much different from Facebook - and remember, a user can always choose to protect their tweets. Additionally, as I said above, social location is going to evolve way beyond sharing "where are you now?" to "let's talk, and by the way, you can learn a lot - and trust me more - about the context of my conversation by where I am". Finally, if Facebook doesn't hurry up and get going, by the time they get around to location Twitter might already be the dominant location platform.

    As always, thanks for reading and contributing!
blog comments powered by Disqus