Twitter Boosts Geolocation Capabilities With Mixer Labs Acquisition

Twitter will use the technology to add "contextual relevance of location to tweets," according to a posting by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams on Twitter's blog. "When current location is added to tweets, new and valuable services emerge " everything from breaking news to finding friends or local businesses can be dramatically enhanced."

"We want to know What's happening?, and more precisely, Where is it happening? As a dramatic example, twittering 'Earthquake!' alone is not as informative as 'Earthquake!' coupled with your current location," the blog said.

Last month Twitter launched its Geotagging API which allows users to add latitude and longitude to tweets.

Twitter, in the blog, said it is mulling how to integrate the Mixer Labs technology with the Twitter API to develop geo-enabled apps along the same lines as Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro and others.

Mixer Labs was started by two former Google employees.