Money Matters, Simplified.
Twitter becomes location savvy, acquires Mixer Labs
by Pankhuri kapoor - December 24, 2009 - comments
Twitter launches geolocation service that will help users provide location details with their tweets
San Francisco, California, December 24: Twitter has acquired Mixer Labs, the company that manufactured GeoAPI, an application that provides geolocation services for mobile applications and is all set to provide the users with navigation services on their mobile phones while tweeting with friends.
The announcement of the acquisition came on Wednesday and Twitter users will now be able to attach their current location to their posts.
Evan Williams who is the chief executive officer of Twitter says, “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.”
“Adding location-based references could also enhance services like finding friends or local businesses. Users will also be able to search where an event is happening.”
All your location needs in one API. A service from Twitter
The Twitter team has been collecting data from Flickr, Foursquare, YouTube, Weatherbug and has made it easy for finding the longitude and latitude of any place.
The new API accepts a location with each tweet and this will also help the Geotagging API and Twitter will step forward as a location provider.
GeoAPI was launched as a cloud service aimed at developers. The business model is to charge per X thousand of queries per day. So far their product pages are still online and they are listed as ‘All your location needs in one API. A service from Twitter’.
It may be noted that currently Twitter charges for access to the fire hose and they already have 50,000 applications using their API.
Mixer Labs staff will enhance the geolocating feature on Twitter
“We will be looking at how to integrate the work Mixer Labs has done with the Twitter API in useful ways that give developers behind geo-enabled apps like Birdfeed,Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro and other powerful new possibilities,” says Evan Williams.
“We look forward to building features together that will make Twitter even more interesting and relevant to your daily life, no matter where you are. Please join us in welcoming this fine new crew to Twitter Headquarters.”
Adding a new feather to its cap
In a bid to fight competition and provide something different, Twitter has now become location savvy. Mixer Labs has offered the developers access to the data through an API. So an application could get valuable information on nearby tweets or locations of interest from the comfort of their homes.
Even Google is all set to launch a similar application soon and this will mark the future of location finding on the web.