Geopocketing- When Twitter Gets Cool Again

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Hey Chris,
Definitely practical uses for Geotracking/Geopocketing based tweets...the 'missing animal' theme got me thinking about missing people or Amber Alerts...could be quite useful for awareness based Tweets. I wonder if their is a practical application for geopocketing for Medical, EMS or Police et al. Sunamis, disasters (could these alerts be more effective channels to communicate with those that need this information. I know that I would be more aware of this type of information via this medium since I don't consume that much TV or Radio as I once did. I consume more of my information via Twitter Feeds, Blogs and online sources. I definitely think there is a way to 'tune in' and investigate geopocketing. Thanks for taking me on that tangent.

I just finished a mashup of GeoAPI, Twitter, and the Layar augmented reality service for smartphones. Its at http://www.altnewworld.com . Think Foursquare for everyone - you can check into any of 16M US locations , or create your own location. Your checkin and optional message is tweeted out! You can also see who else has 'checked in' to your area! Its on iPhone3g and Android phones via the Layar application - search for dating!

Great idea, but I know I'm dragging up an old tool now, but did Jaiku's Nokia client not do this about 4/5 years ago? I remember when that used to go basic location (either GPS or by use of the cell-tower your mobile was connected to). I'm fairly sure there was a method for when you updated your status, it only showed up in the local area to your subscribers.
Definitely seems like a great idea though if not (and it's likely I'm wrong about the local updating), I know I'm hesitant to broadcast on Twitter regularly as I know most of the people connected aren't in my area.....

I hope twitter would do this. This is a brilliant idea.

I wish you could tweet and retweet by lists. I have my contacts organized by various locations, work, or social groupings and know that now everyone needs to read every tweet. Since I can't tweet to a specific list, I, too, have often not bothered to tweet something that some groups would want or need.

It's an interesting idea to be sure: but then it seems to assume you know who is and is not interested in certain information. The virtue of social technologies like twitter is that we are all creating without necessarily knowing who is consuming. (the progression from IM, where we knew who was getting our message)

Love the idea. We use an analogue version of that in my town with our airport code as a hashtag #yyj.

But of course geolocation tech would make that a whole lot easier, and tuneable.

Heh, looks like you're about to start another small biz, Chris!

Geo-targeting tweets would be ideal. Perhaps it comes down to utilizing a mapping feature or having settings built in with an easy-choice feature. The settings could break down local, regional, national, int. Who knows - but I definitely think you're on to something here.

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Thinking about geopocketing with Twitter and local lost cats
led me to think about other ideas for Twitter on a mobile phone. Great way to contact local people in an emergency - doctor or ambulance. What about a local event that you want to remind people about of special shopping event.? In countries like UK where the weather is currently snow bloced why not tweetingto warn drivers road that are blocked or icey roads?

OMG that's totally genius Chris. I'm sure someone else has had a similar idea but it's the first time I've ever heard about. Things integrated into a Twitter premium account like this would make it well worth purchasing, you agree?

Forgive me if this has already been said before but 86 comments seemed scaryto read through.

But I always thought that this was where Twitter as a company was heading, it has its mass uses surely, but if it wants to compete with Facebook then the ability to use it as a tool to build community not just online, but offline too is so powerful. I remember hearing a keynote from one of the creators of twitter and he was talking about the implications of twitter. He mentioned something about getting information out to people about fires etc... That then made me think that is where they want to take Twitter.

GeoLocations etc... is obviously a step towards this and soon they will be launching local trends surely? The ability to work on two levels will make Twitter a huge tool for people with lost pets, to emergency services.

hey, this is exactly the same thought as one company i'm following. i saw them on crunchbase.

here's their url:
http://www.shownearby.com

Geopocketing tweets great as an option only there are tweets that aren't relevant to all but then again without geopocketing not everyone is always reading tweets all the time so I think tweeting in your time zone is also good enough till we have such an option

Haahaa - I knew you would push something like this out sooner or later.

Interestingly enough I have something logically completed just the opposite (just need to package a nice UI on it) - find people in certain geographic areas on Twitter - example: give me registered users in Ny, Ny or in Tampa, Fl, interfaced with Twitter's search API (which already does geolocation to a degree) and you find all tweeters in that area - one would think it simple to accomplish the same thing. In fact - when tweeting, it would be necessary to geolocate based upon current location (ex at CES) provided users have updated their lat/lon or zip/postal/city/state within Twitter as they have traveled to the event/area - it would then would be very simple to find all your followers in that area, and only tweet them.

Hmmm....anyone interested in what I have thus far and partnering? Yup, ok that was blunt, that's one of my 2010 strategies is to not be chicken in speaking up about ideas, projects, thoughts etc. . Don't have my keyword for it yet, other than blunt.

Bill
@southplatte

That is a BRILLIANT idea, Chris!

Sorry if I repeat others comments, I just don't have the time to read through them all.

From a "privacy" concern of marketers targeting people in specific locations, I actually think only genuine marketers with reasonable offers would use this method of targeting. The wannabe marketers responsible for most spam are too busy trying to get their message out to as many people as possible and wouldn't bother with this sort of intricate targeting.

A++ idea. Looking forward to seeing this implemented! (It's too good to ignore, and as some people point out, facebook already does this)

But...(there's always a "but" with me, eh?) The average Twitter user doesn't have 100K followers. The power in tweeting about a lost pet (or wallet, or traffic tie up, etc) is often in the reach, not the tweet itself. In other words, if i tweet that there's a lost cat in my neighbourhood, and people see that and retweet it to their networks (which are different than mine) then it just might get to the right person as the circle expands.

However, it IS a good idea for location based events - you don't care that I'm at TEDxOttawa or IgniteOttawa necessarily...I may not care that you are at CES. To be able to direct tweets to an event based on location/radius etc....now that's clever. And useful.

Amen. This needs to happen pronto. Love the idea

This would be fantastic. I think about this all the time when I'm posting local reviews or commentary on local events.

Yeah I was thinking something similar while using Foursquare the other day. It would open up a whole new game to Twitter and would allow us to really get creative with it.

Someone, somewhere must be working on this already, right?

Great idea. There are many ways that it could be useful. Like for real estate agents to let people know about new properties on the market.

Location could be just one filter. Perhaps there could be others: topic (marketing, technology, iPhone, etc), online/offline (is it a blog post or a meeting in the real world), importance, etc.

Why should you restrict me? What if I run the "lost cat service" 20 miles away covering a 3 county area and you restrict your tweet to "people within 5 miles". Better to just geo-tag your tweet and then let me decide if I want to read only tweets in my area in my search box or twitter settings.

Awesome idea. And thinking about the logistics - everyone will probably just create a list that is specified within twitter setting to be "geopocketed" - and when set up both users would have to agree to it working both ways - so that "geopocketed" tweets will appear in the streams of those who agreed to that users' local tweets. Seems totally doable... lets get on it Twitter!

That is simply a GREAT idea. There are so many times when I want to Tweet only to the Minneapolis/St. Paul market and not bore my friends around the world. Currently, I use a #MSP hashtag to let everyone know it's a locally aimed Tweet, but that's a pretty lame approach and creates noise in everyone else's stream.

Twitter 'silos' would be great based on location. The same applies to tweeting in general.

Why can't we have a choice to tweet to a location-specific audience? THere's some tweets I'd like to send out to an Australian audience in general, some Sydney-specific and others suburb specific.

Sometimes I differentiate my tweets by language. That helps too.

Thanks Chris.

HI Chris,

You're definitely on to something, and I think this is a big way to convince people that this data as useful to them. At the same time, ironically enough, it's likely to get people more comfortable with sharing geolocation data--which then makes it easier to target them for marketing purposes (and one reason why many people have been reluctant to allow this level of tracking detail up to now).

Your story reminds me of that phone ad (not sure which one) about the little girl with the missing dog, and the big social network that helps a boy find it.

That would be extremely useful, and sounds like a perfect way to start monetizing Twitter. I'd pay for that service.

Local-ness; it's not just for Twitter.

Yeah, I wanna be able to choose whether I'm speaking to my physically close friends, my professionally close friends, my musically close friends; I need segmentation all 'round.

One of my clients (PR) has a white label app that we built for Australian councils as ewn.com.au in 2008 for emergency alerting which evolved last year into custom apps for our corp clients only in Syd & Bris who love it. It does everything you mentioned except sort your lists real time - you have to let in "sync" then send. It's got text msg via applet at $0.05 (or whatever your wholesale gateway carrier oncost is) and indentifies location based first on current, if not avail then last known (ie. if not geo-tag tweets then user account location is default). Same thing for integration with all the social API's plus AIR and MS Exchange + MAC contacts. Just started to look into adding Batchblue to the mix since I heard you give props on Dishymix - it's sensational.

Given mobile is such a messy device internationally we're still costing the sales potential for the smartphone apps vs potential etc.

In the mean time we're talking to developers in the US and around the globe to get a partner or two in the US and Europe to finish particular handset codes and implementation.

Great idea!

Chris:
That is a great idea. Maybe Twitter should buy Loopt or someone who already does that "Who is Near Me" stuff.
Ed

Hi!

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Your friend,
DeAnna
@DeeLynn

Fantastic Idea! I see a lot of earlier comments from people who would prefer to adapt current capabilities like "lists" to "sort of" accomplish the same thing. But, personally, having the capability to perform a function directly is much more favorable than hacking some work-arounds. Thinking outside the box rather than scrunching the box to "sort of" fit your needs.

Ummm... isn't that what hash tags are for? In the cat example, just use the hashtag for your city. If someone wants to know what's going on at a specific event or location like CES, just save a search for #CES2010.

Or am I missing something?

Sort of. I agree with you that using the tag framework makes the most sense and is the simplest solution. But I think what you're missing is what about events (lost dog, concert, crime, party, game, etc...) that don't have a designated hashtag. How to keep an eye out for all "events" occuring in a certain geographic area??
Here's my solution which I proposed to Twitter's Ryan Sarver. To summarize I propose a geotag solution but here are the details with some examples:
http://twitter.com/myprpro/status/8375273267

Brogan - Would love to hear your comments on this.

Thanks!
Hugh

That is a great idea!

That is a GREAT idea. That would be very helpful to help us, tweeters, target our audiences.

Great idea, this would take location awareness and Twitter to a new level. This could also be used in many different ways (ala Foursquare) for targeted Marketing, etc.

Howdy Chris,

Social media has connected us to the world - VERY cool indeed; funny how localizing the apps will make them so much more useful. Great idea... you should build the app : )

There's a monetization for that.

yes, and this is where people reckon Google and Microsoft will now benefit with local listings on Bing.com and Google.com (thanks to Twitter!)

Great idea with geopacketing, but what about just targeting tweets in general? On tweetdeck I segment my tweets for groups like location, tweeting topics, friends, business partners, coworkers, etc. It would be awesome to be able to geotarget your tweets, but even BETTER to segment your list so that my friends will only get fed tweets that are interesting to them.

I realize this makes Twitter a little more complicated, but it would be an awesome feature to have.

And thanks for the post :)

That's a great "blink" idea Chris. Shannon - You nailed it! Yes!

I would like to learn more about this segmentation technique. Where might I learn more please. Thanks and happy new year

Great idea. It fits with a related one -- why can't Twitter offer the option for people to create (and subscribe to) "channels"?

When creating a Tweet, I'd love to have a dropdown list appear with my list of channels. Then I could (multiselect) the channel(s) for that Tweet to go out on. Options might include local, family, humor, how-to, etc.

Followers could subscribe to all channels - or just the one(s) of most interest. In the case of a local feed, this approach would let a person who lives in an area but is travelling outside of the geopocket to remain connected.

What do you think?

Best,
Mark Frazier
@openworld @buildership @peerlearning

I'm sure someone else has probably suggested this but how about using geotags? I mean to say we use # for hashtags; we could use ! followed by the location as a geotag that would be part of the 140 character tweet (rather than affixed to one's profile). The obvious question would be what would you use as the location of your intended recipients. GPS coordinates? I would suggest that would be too narrow. I propose a new mapping system that is far less targetted but more regional in nature. For example, Chris, if you were in Marshfield, WI, and noticed a sign to that effect you would enter the zip code for Marshfield as your geotag. Something like !US54449+10. The plus 10 would indicate you'd want anyone within a 10 kilometer (or mile) radius to take note. If a child were kidnapped you could use !US54449+100 and then expand it to US54449+500 later in the day if the kidnapper was not caught immediately.
Outside the US, other codes could be used. I'd be interested to hear ideas on this.
Bottom line, I think geotagging makes sense because that way you still preserve the essence of twitter which is the public nature of the messages and the simplicity of use.
Just a thought.

I really like the idea Chris, and I also directly thought about the follow-up idea by Mike Whaling, to be able to tweet only to certain lists. Personally, I would benefit from adding the idea to languages as well, as I'm Swedish I often get replys written in Swedish from people that only tweet in Swedish. Then I always have to decide if I should tweet back in Swedish and perhaps annoy my other followers, or be very impersonal by tweeting back in English. I could also use DM, but having the option to reply in Swedish only to my swedish followers would be great. Also, this could be a good way for me to have the opportunity to share more material from Swedish sites. Anyway, great idea, I hope they pick it up!

great! kind of like geo-targeting! ?

:)

I'd want a way to subscribe to / follow selected geopockets, whether or not I myself am there...

I think that is a great idea. Twitter is a great tool for micro-bursts, but I agree sometimes local tweets are irrelevant. I kinda have tried to achieve this by creating lists of people I know in my city, but its a manual process and something like geo-targeted tweets would be automated and clean-up the main Twitter feed.

I'm not sure if anyone else has mentioned this but that would be a great way for LOCAL business to CONNECT with fellow tweeters in their area!

i was wondering the other day if i could see trends sorted out for those 3rd tier contacts and connections that i am closest to. yes, lists can help me see what has been said, but it'd be a whole nother level of coolness to see what trending topics are being shared or talked about. i could know more of what is everyone's interests when i'm heading to thanksgiving dinner or whatever gathering.

i like the location driven tweet idea as well as the others have shared. its a great one

Fantastic idea Chris. This would help tremendously with destination marketing as well.

You hit the nail on the head of why I think services like @foursquare and @gowalla are mostly spam. I live outside of Greensboro, NC. There is no value whatsoever in telling me you've 'checked in' at a coffee shop in Boston. Now, if I happen to visit Boston and wonder where the popular coffee shops are, that's where these services could be helpful.

Similar to the tweets you send about being in an airport Borders and asking people to stop by. I'd love to, if only you were at one of my local airport. Does me no good to know you're at Dulles or wherever.

Geopocketing is a fantastic idea. Sign me up.

dude ... nice!

i love it ... and it totally makes sense, adding some geovalue through datafiltering ... we got the data, now we need to implement some wisdom and guidance to make sense of it all and actually reassemble it to make our own little frankensteinian sense of it all

more fantasterrificness from the CB, nice nice nice!

They have it ...it's a service that runs on top of the Layer.net app

http://twitter.com/A_F

I've been thinking a bit about this but am unsure on which platforms it most precisely belongs. For some reason I feel like the communities that would most buy into geo-targeting have not been sufficiently facilitated. I view twitter and facebook as opposite and sideways ends of the pole. Facebook facilitating a private/personal community with and twitter as a RIGHT NOW public offering. I honestly believe there is room to create some in between the spectrum - between public and private and between right now and an ongoing organization of personal information. I know that I oversimplify facebook, but I think at the end of the day the existing community has defined its potential for function.

As a side, Twinkle is an interesting iphone app that allows you to message others. It is a twitter but only concerned with people within a certain distance from you. Unfortunately, the community is dominated by directionless conversation.

Great idea. I want it yesterday. A lot of AR apps (eg tweeps around on layar) allow you to see tweets within a radius of x miles(where you choose x). It would be great to be able to use the same approach to filter for geography and other factors.

I believe Chris Messina et al is working on the syntax for this. Might look something like "Missing cat /94530" where 94530 is the location (zip code in this case).

My example is probably not completely correct, I only started reading about this yesterday at microsyntax.org.

As long as the syntax-based system takes into account that not all zip codes are created equal (e.g. Canada's codes are alphanumerical and six characters). But I do like this idea.

Chris- Very thoughtful to think about helping in that situation.... Would a Foursquare or Gowalla been a good resource in that instance? (still learning about them/geo-location, etc)

Best, Brian-

Hi Chris,

As a publicist, I've come up with this targeting decision time and again. For instance, if I'm promoting a magician/illusionist who has an upcoming gig in Sarasota -- what to do? Do I open a whole new Twitter account for that area? Or does putting a hashmark before the city (#Sarasota) help?

I love the idea of geopocketing -- even love the name.

Thanks for your great ideas! -Skye

Chris, I see the logic is geopocketing in the missing cat case. But the beauty of twitter is how it shrinks distances across cultures and brings up into the lives of peeps across the globe. So I'd fear restricting CES tweets to local only.

Your idea seems similar to Facebook's lists so we can restrict tweets/updates to select set of people. I find the lists complicated in their implementation, so won't work for twitter.

This is definitely an option for an app to build out groups based on geo subscription - listen up Tweetie and Tweetdeck

Sounds like a Foursquare and Twitter mashup ... that's a match made in heaven. Then you could add Yelp into the mix (more integrated). Wow is all i've got to say.

Yeah I think you're onto something here frank.

I think there would be a danger though of Twitter losing some of its flavor, and fragmenting. It would be an interesting study in evolution though, seeing if Twitter "shards" start developing separated by locale, each shard developing its own lingo and culture.

yeah, I would love to see Foursquare make that a "to-develop" add-on for their service! :)

This would be the PERFECT solution for people that are trying to use twitter right now as a weekly fireside chat platform i.e. @mackcollier . I jump in that conversation every now and then and feel for the majority of my users that have to put up with my babble that they don't care about. Just like I don't want to hear everything everybody else has to say, I am sure not all of my followers want to hear my every word.

Selectivity is the key here, Chris. Your tweets about which restaurant to meet at mean zippo to me when I'm home in Austin. But your take on which cool gadgets have impressed you the most would hold some appeal to me. How long until Twitter gets this going? :)

This would work perfectly for the missing cat but I recall you tweeting once at the airport when the car service didn't show and a person who owned a service responded from another city but covered where you were. Still, a great idea!

Great idea Chris! It would solve my dilemma. @ediblesouthshore

Brilliant idea! Just another element to "hyperlocalization" of content. In too many ways the Web is still too "global" in nature.

Brilliant idea!!! I occassionally post London-specific tweets that I think are useful to local commuters/residents/drivers. It would be great to not annoy my other followers with that information but still share it because I do feel it's important to the minority.

You put the word out, maybe a developer will create an app for that.

Chris,

Twitter already announced this is in the works with it's acquisition of Mixer Labs, the developers of GeoAPI which will essential add geo tagging to tweets. See their announcement on their blog.

That would be cool. I do tweet about alot of local Baltimore stuff then realize I might have 10 out of my 1700 followers live near Baltimore. That means I am boring the hell out of the other 1690 followers. Twitter first needs to fix the overcapacity problem before they tackle a project like this.

Great Post!!!

Yes geopocketing is a cool idea. But ...there's still tons of value for new users to see how you or other more experienced tweeters use twitter...whose telling you folks across the globe would bore over tweets of a missing cat? in their same hood there may be a missing child they're reading a flier on that moment they get your tweet and they see the value you place on the tweet and opt to tweet out what is on the very flier they're reading. dig? I've just seen time and again, what i think is lame still has meaning b/c it's a greater learning going on. i think you know this. i think you've seen this. i still think what you're suggesting is awesome but throw out whatever's telling you some kinds of tweets may be lame. if you found value in whatever's the local content, others may too and it may save a life. just saying.

Facebook recently added the ability to do this with Status Updates which I thought was a great idea. It isn't quite there yet, but it is a start.

I'd love to be able to send text messages to groups of people by either predefined categories or local. So many ways to slice and dice and I'm sure someone out there is working on it. Let's hope it comes soon.

I'm speaking at MIDEM 2010 in Cannes this month, and they are solving this problem by making an iPhone App for their conference with attendee Twitter handles and conference only tweets. A) They had to pay someone to make the app B) Not all of us have iPhones (I'm perfectly happy with my WinMo HTC Touch Pro 2 on Verizon, for example)

This would be a good value add. How would you all suggest addressing the safety issues I discussed in http://uptownuncorked.com/2010/01/02/geolocatio... with geolocation added - meaning, if people concerned about the issues in that post opt out of geolocation, they miss cool features like this, but if they opt in they may have other issues arise - how to ensure app makers and sites allow for obscuring exact location, etc?

An interesting take on it. I've seen some tweets come through my Tweetdeck with a geo-location, so if the location can come through why not targeting.

Very good, Chris. It's the selectivity that's the thing, in my book. I've had to go to some lengths to turn *off* geolocation as the default on some of my smartphone apps, just because I don't always want to broadcast my location. (Example: when my whole family was away from home for 10 days over Christmas.) But there are plenty of times when inserting my location into the mix would be helpful to me and my social audience.

And I don't even use FourSquare. ;)

good idea and reflexion

According to an AT&T commercial, tweeting to 100,000 people actually would help find a lost pet. In that case, a dog, facilitated by a former NCAA basketball star.

In reality your idea's great - filters drive relevance.

Great idea... if Facebook can do it, why not Twitter.

Chris, the feature you're talking about is already developed, but not only as a stand-alone twitter feature yet as a global conversation tool. You'll be able to use sooner than you might expect.

If you want to be among the first to take it for a spin, let me know.

Would love to know more about this.

I am all for getting in on this too. This is a great idea and has tremendous potential for all sorts of marketing and informing others.

Send it on over once you have it available.

I'd be interested in it also.

Bill

Hello Bill,

feel free to drop me an email.

practical indeed.
especially for tweetups: who's up for a mug at M&B - CW (990 followers go "what?")

This would be great. I have always said that the real power of Twitter for the average person (not the Chris Brogans of the world who have 100,000 followers) is local. I do not always follow everyone back if I do not see a connection... but I follow everyone who lives in Austin, TX, as there is a big chance we could meet in person. I have elevated dozens of people from random folks I know on Twitter to local friends who I interact with personally in my home town.

I'd be surprised if Twitter hadn't thought of it already.

But if they haven't? Let's start suggesting it. Filtering is becoming an issue for me & I'm in the 500 follower / following range. I can't imagine how hectic it must be for you. Eliminates the "broadcast" nature of twitter too.

The downside is, it also kills the beauty of twitter, how open it is. If you could restrict it to people in the area, but keep it open for searching outside your area? Hmm...

Interesting idea, and one at least in part addressed by Brightkite - a kind of location based twitter (and if memory serves, can be linked to Twitter) I think this one's got legs and adds a really interesting new dimension.

Seriously though folks (I am an engineer) - this is a big issue for me when I need to get a message to just the fellow Brits who're following me in Twitter (@Coffeemate49). If I put them all into a list - how do I then send a message to all of them but only them? Is there any software out there which will give me that ability?

Great idea. What if you could pocket your data not only by location, but also by subject/topic? Outbound filtering could become a sort of 'un-hashtag' :-)

Combine with creating lists of tweeps in your geo-pocket and even geo-locate them in augmented reality on your Smart phone cam?

Good idea! Would make sense but also tweeting a bit more complex as you would have to re-organize your followers or at least have the chance to define tags for every follower...

Have fun at CES