Search Marketing Sage

The Twitter blog announced last Thursday that geotagging is now enabled for the Twitter API.  Don’t stress – it’s disabled by default.  However, it’s showing up on Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro if you haven’t noticed already.  From the Twitter blog:

“It’s important to note geotagging is disabled by default for all users which means you will need to opt-in in order to use it. To activate the new geotagging functionality, go to your Settings page and click ‘Enable Geotagging’.”

You can choose to turn geotagging on, much like what UberTwitter offers.  If you’re concerned about this I’d like to pose a question. Do you have your workplace listed on Twitter or LinkedIn?  People could easily determine where you’re tweeting from between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.  Not to scare anyone, but figuring out someone’s location, especially during working hours, isn’t too difficult.

I completely understand the concern of tweeting your location when you’re at home – not a good idea.  However, to me, tweeting your location when you’re out of the house and with other people probably would not be an issue.  Actually, it would help people meet up with Twitter friends IRL.  Yes, in real life, as in real social interaction.

That same logic surrounds Foursquare, which is expanding rapidly.  There are so many possibilities surrounding these technologies – one being free advertising for small consumer based businesses.  Recently, Foursquare doubled the number of cities available with the application, taking it to 100 cities across the world.  With this much growth, and claims like “it’s next year’s Twitter” obviously there are quite a few people using Foursquare that aren’t hesitant to share their location.

But as you can probably tell, I’m here at Search Mojo – waiting for your feedback.  Are you willing to share your location?  Let me know what you think. Find me @reneerevetta on Twitter or leave a comment below.