Twitter Now Offers Integration with Foursquare and Gowalla

Location sensitive apps are the latest buzz amongst social networks. Twitter is the latest social network to join the location-based-apps bandwagon by announcing its “Twitter Places” tool. The new service is aimed at making your tweets location aware. When you tweet with the new ‘Twitter Places’ feature activated, these tweets will show the location from where they have originated.

Will ‘Places’ be another feather in the cap for Twitter’s success story? Or is too late? Only time will tell.

It’s all about the location

Location is rage these days. The phenomenal success of location-based networks like Foursquare and Gowalla has redefined the meaning of check-in services. Though Twitter rolled out its location API last year, it did not offer a tool to utilize the location-based capabilities till last week.

Twitter Places gets the best of both worlds – the amazing power of Twitter’s micro-blogging platform and location information in order to localize tweets and make tweets more “contextual”. All that you need is a GPS-enabled mobile phone and enable the “tweet my location” flag.

Foursquare and Gowalla Integration

A wise man once said “Never miss with the champions, even if you are one of them” and Twitter has taken this advice seriously for sure. Instead of challenging the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla, the undisputed kings of check-in based services; Twitter has chosen the smarter way out – integration with Foursquare and Gowalla. Makes perfect sense – after all, if you can’t beat them, partner with them.

When you click on a Twitter Place, you actually see Foursquare and Gowalla check-ins for that location in addition to standard tweets. Many users use Foursquare in order to find tips from others about a specific location. With tweets being associated to locations, it opens up a whole new avenue of fantastic possibilities. You have a micro-blogging service, a location service, a recommendation engine – all working in tandem.

Does it make business sense?

Many online marketers believe that location services are mindless games with no business sense at all. I beg to disagree and I personally believe that they offer massive business potential. Attach a promotional campaign to check-ins for a location, encourage people to check-in and spread the word about it on social networks. It will do a world of good to spreading the popularity of your business. Further, since these networks are location-aware, so you can do targeted marketing.

World Cup Fever – Perfect Timing for launch?

Twitter timed the launch of ‘Places’ in order to cash in on the FIFA World Cup fever that has gripped the whole world. On it’s blog, Twitter uses  a World Cup watcher as an example, as you’ll be able to tell if that person is watching at his house, the stadium or at a local watering hole.

Twitter Crashes at last – Worst Possible Timing

Unfortunate as it is, the launch of ‘Twitter Places’ has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Shortly after Twitter launched the new feature, its service crashed and users were left cursing the dreaded “fail whale” that appears on the site. While outages aren’t an exception on Twitter, the latest one has taken the sheen out of the launch of ‘Twitter Places’.

Being a staunch Twitter loyalist, I’m happy that Twitter continues to redefine the ‘social network’ terminology. Once touted as a SMS service, it has emerged as the lethal combo of world’s best micro-blogging service, social network and now a location-based service. Way to go!

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