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16th Jun 10
Jonathan Cavell
Twitter announced on Monday via their blog that they would be introducing Twitter Places over the next couple weeks. After quite a bit of thought, I’m not sure if it will take off or not. On the one hand, the additional context for tweets can be extremely valuable. On the other hand, I think that many people will prefer to “check-in” using one piece of software and tweet using another one.
While many people use Twitter to update their status. Literally making posts like, “I’m watching the World Cup Game at Piper’s.” Many other people (like me) only occasionally use it for this purpose. I’m much more likely to post, “Read this interesting article on Tech Crunch” or “Here’s what my new blog post is about.” Perhaps I’m a little bit biased, but I think these posts are where the real value of Twitter comes from; and for these it not only doesn’t matter where I am, I’d usually prefer not to say. Twitter needs to be careful to ensure that Places isn’t so invasive that it drives people away from the service. That said. I do use FourSquare, and think it will soon be an invaluable tool for making the social web in to a social world. That said, most of the people who follow me on Twitter wouldn’t care to hear my FourSquare updates and vice versa.
On the other hand, more then occasionally, I make posts for my Twitter followers that deal directly with my current location. For example, if I really am watching the World Cup game at Pipers, it’s the kind of thing I would want to point out to everyone. I would likely check in on FourSquare and have it push to Twitter. If, after I checked in, I noted that Pipers had an exceptional deal on Blue Moon I might choose to make a Twitter update like, “Great special on Blue Moon at Pipers.” The location context would allow me to say, “Come get a Blue Moon for $1!” For these cases, I’m excited about Twitter Places. Just as long as when I make fun of the English goaltender or publicize my last blog post Twitter lets me (easily) turn off my location.
