Twitter is bringing a geo-location feature to its fast-growing social networking and micro-blogging service. Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, said Thursday the service will soon allow users to activate location data for their service that will display their latitude and longitude and follow the locations of other users.
Eventually, Twitter users will be able to use the geo-location feature to follow the tweets of others from their neighborhood or at special events or emergencies, or for other uses.
"We're gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware," Stone said in a Twitter blog.
Stone said the feature will first be released to developers to create applications for the service. "A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet," he said.
"There will likely be many use cases we haven't even thought of yet which is part of what makes this so exciting," he said. Applications for corporate sales or advertising seem to be naturals for the service.
"Developers will have access to this new geo-location feature early which means it will most likely be available on your app of choice before it's available on Twitter's web site," Stone added. "Later, we'll add it to our mobile web site and Twitter.com as well."
Stay tuned.
