Twitter Highlights Local Tweets

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Tweet this: A new analysis from RJMetrics shows that Twitter had more than 75 million members as of December, up from about five million in December 2008, 700,000 in December 2007, and 20,000 in January 2007. The most active user base stands at about 15 million members. Of its 75 million users, more than 80 percent have 10 or fewer followers and have tweeted fewer than 10 times. About a quarter of Twitter members have been completely inactive. Credit: Tommy McCall

The new Twitter feature depends, of course, on knowing the accurate location of a Twitterer. Many mobile devices allow GPS data to be affixed to a tweet or other communication, and Twitter can accept such data. But the mobile phone user must specifically authorize the GPS transmission for privacy reasons. So right now, for the most part, Twitter determines the location by noting a Twitterer's Internet protocol address--a rough proxy for geographical location--or the home city she listed when she signed up.

Either way, "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," Williams wrote in the December blog post. "Our efforts in this area have just begun."

Google and Bing and smaller search engines such as Cuil have all recently inked deals with Twitter to obtain streams of its data for real-time search. Dylan Casey, product manager for Google real-time search, said in a recent interview that adding location data would be crucial to improving what kinds of tweets Google supplies to its searchers. "We are heavily focusing on the mobile experience, and adding even more and more precision to the comments that you are already getting," Casey says. If you tweet that you've just seen a major traffic accident, for example, it's helpful to know the exact stretch of roadway--something GPS coordinates can provide.

In a separate effort, Twitter is working to improve its system for recommending what Twitterers to follow. It has always suggested prominent Twitterers, but it recently launched a new suggestions page fueled by algorithms that identify clusters of people with similar interests for you to choose from.

"Rather than suggesting a random set of 20 users for a new user to follow, now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists," wrote Josh Elman, a Twitter product manager who recently defected from Facebook, in a blog post published on Thursday. "These lists will be refreshed frequently as the algorithms identify new users who should be suggested in these lists, and some that are not as engaging to new users will be removed."