It all seems to be happening at Twitter these days as hardly a day goes by when the popular micro-blogging social networking site doesn’t appear in the news for something or other.
The latest info is that Twitter has bought Mixer Labs, a start-up company created by two former Google employees, in order to bring location based services to the site.
What this means for Tweeters is that they will be able to identify the location of people sending Tweets which adds a whole new dimension to the service.
Your location doesn’t actually appear in the Tweet itself of course, it is listed underneath the message along with info such as the time you sent the Tweet and the Twitter client that you used to send it.
Twitter’s Evan Williams, a co-founder of the site, wrote in the company 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.”
“Our efforts in this area have just begun. Today, we’re excited to announce a major new step into the location-aware future.”
He goes on “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.”
“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 others powerful new possibilities
“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.”
Twitter has signed an agreement with Microsoft and Google to allow them access to the data to use in their search engines so of course we’re all wondering if there is any cash involved in the deal.
If so does this mean that there really is a way to make money from free social networking sites like Twitter and they really can turn out a profit?
There are rumours afoot that Google and Microsoft could be paying tens of millions of dollars to Twitter as part of the deal, which if true, would shut a few mouths up and put an end to all the speculation and criticism about Twitter not being a valid business model because it’s unable to generate cash.
Go Twitter!
