Developer Preview: Geolocation API

[Ryan Sarver]

We wanted to give you all a heads up on a cool new feature that is coming soon - Geolocation. The Geolocation API will give us the ability to attach geographic metadata to tweets to provide additional context with your update. Along with the option to tag updates, we will be able to search for nearby tweets and view the geo metadata in user timelines. The additional context allows for us to deliver more meaningful and localized experiences to users. We are also really excited about a unique facet of this release in that it will be API-only initially. This means that Twitter.com won't surface the functionality and we look forward to seeing the new and interesting experiences that will grow out of the ecosystem.

As part of our Geolocation efforts we will soon be publishing "Geolocation Best Pracitices" to guide everyone through issues like security and privacy as well as discussing some ideal experiences for users. Topics will include things like storage of location data, what to do with a user's historical data, how to present the concept of geotagging and more. The guide will create a framework from which we can address the challenges that come about when dealing with something as sensitive as someone's location while hopefully allowing everyone enough creative freedom to create their own experiences around it.

It is important to note that the feature is going to be strictly opt-in. It will be disabled until a user chooses to switch it on. We will provide a read-only attribute <geo_enabled> on the user object so an app can detect if the user has it disabled and let them know if they need to turn it on before using a geolocation feature.

While we can't provide an exact date for launch, you should plan on having a few weeks of development time before the new API is officially launched. With that being said, lets get to it...

Example: Geotagging a Tweet
-----------------------
curl -d "lat=37.780467&long=-122.396762&status=I have arrived" -u user:pass "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml"

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<status>

<created_at>Tue Apr 07 22:52:51 +0000 2009</created_at>

...

<geo xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss">

<georss:point>37.780467 -122.396762</georss:point>

</geo>

<user>

<id>1401881</id>

<name>Doug Williams</name>

...

<geo_enabled>true</geo_enabled>

...

</user>

</status>

We have also updated the wiki to reflect what the API will look like when it launches, so check it out and let us know if you have any questions:
http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses%C2%A0update

http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-account%C2%A0verify_credentials

We'll also be in our recently announced IRC channel (#twitterapi on irc.freenode.net) if you want to discuss the announcement with the team.

Ryan

PM, Platform Team

http://twitter.com/rsarver