Twitter turns on geolocation functionality

Twitter is now allowing its externally built applications to provide geolocation features to end users, after announcing its intention to do so in August.

The functionality is provided via a specific geotagging API (application programming interface) that external developers can use to build geolocation features in their applications.

Some applications like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, and Twittelator Pro already have activated geolocation features.

“We are really looking forward to seeing the creative uses emerge from the developer community,” wrote Twitter official Ryan Sarver in an official blog post.

For end users, geotagging is disabled by default. They can turn it on by going to their Twitter “settings” section. Twitter plans to activate geotagging on Twitter.com later. For now, it's limited to third-party applications.

With geotagging functionality, developers could let end users append location coordinates to their Twitter messages and let them search for posts generated specifically from a particular physical place.

For example, a Twitter user could find what people are posting from the place where an important event is happening, or what people are saying about a specific restaurant or store.

Geotagging adds an important spatial dimension to the Twitter user experience, which has had a strong real-time component from the start.

To reduce the chances of privacy and security fiascos, Twitter has been in close contact with developers via its discussion forums and wikis. It even published a best-practices guide for the geolocation API.