Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/29869
Using social spaces as delimiters to organize and summarize the data can help translate a set of individual points into analysis and insights. enabling automatic location tagging eliminated the need for its users to embed location information within posts and freed up valuable text space for messages. Twitter presents users with several settings within their location-sharing feature. It’s important to point out that Twitter’s location feature is turned off by default. Only users who opt-in will be able to share their location, and those users can decide whether or not to share on a Tweet-by-Tweet basis. These users also can control how much detail to include about their location. There are several levels presented as part of the location-feature settings: • Exact location—When users choose this option for a given Tweet, their update includes a tag that pin- points their coordinates (latitude and longitude) based on the GPS signal from their mobile device or browser. • Place—Twitter uses a broad definition of “place”— including nearby points of interest and more general areas such as neighborhoods and towns. When users who have chosen to share their location at this level add location to their Tweets, a list of places is pre- sented below their “What’s Happening?” box, and they can choose either a point or an area. Twitter’s Location settings also allow users to tag their Tweets with exact location as well as a wider place. This is an important distinction, because some users won’t want to make a choice between places and social spaces but will want to combine them to maximize location context. Twitter offers access to the data in its Tweet-stream through application programming interfaces (APIs). Location Labs, an LBS company providing tools and data to mobile developers, built some interesting and fun mobile apps based around the Twitter API. One of them, TweetMover (tweetmover.com), is an automated Tweeting game that offers status badges to users based on their movements through neighborhood areas. The free mobile app, available for the iPhone, also automati- cally sends Tweets when users enter neighborhoods—a great example of geofencing in action. Beyond Social Networking Thinking about location in terms of social spaces opens a world of possibilities beyond social networking. Mobility/GPS Special Issue lTwitter users can tag updates at the neighborhood level and protect their exact location. Everyone from academics to bloggers is using social media data streams to gauge trends and make sense of the world. Given the volume of posts worldwide, the only rea- sonable way to use the location data within them is to somehow group them in meaningful ways. Using social spaces as delimiters to organize and summarize the data can help translate a set of individual points into analysis and insights. Steve DuScheid is the director of marketing, Maponics; e-mail: sduscheid@maponics.com. A P R I L 2 O 1 1 / W W W . G E O P L A C E . C O M 25