GeoLocation is one of the hottest stuff right now. If you’re an iPhone user, there are tons of apps that always ask your permission to turn on location features after you’ve installed them. Google has several service that are location-aware enabled. Now, Twitter wants to have this feature as well. In fact it may be sooner than we think. But, would you like to have GeoLocation feature on your Twitter account?For quite some time now, now Twitter developers have been working on application programming interfaces (APIs) that will bring GeoLocation to Twitter. And based on a post from the official Twitter blog, this feature is about to become a reality.
We’re gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.
So, basically what this new feature would be able to do is to localized Tweets that you read. It’s a good thing that Twitter will make it as an opt-in feature. This means, that if localized Tweeting is not your cup of tea, you can always opt to turn off the feature.
While this may be an interesting feature to some Twitter users, I can’t help but be worried of its repercussions especially in terms of user security. And besides, is it really important that you know the location of Tweets and Twitter users? Isn’t it enough that you know of their updates via the 140 character limit of Tweets?
Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not against having this feature. In fact, I’m pro-innovation. I enjoy hearing about new features being introduced to applications and services that I use daily. But there are boundaries to what this application should have. Among these boundaries is when personal security might be threatened.
