reason to not share your location, as it is obvious
anyway. For any live reporting, you want your
location included. When the location has no meaning
or is personal, of course, leave it out.
Of course when you are tweeting from your
girlfriend's house, do not share the damn location.
As the saying goes, it’s all about location, location, location.
The word is out today that both Twitter and Facebook are jumping into the geolocation scene, opening up their services so users can not only share links, pics and random thoughts but also let their friends know where those message blasts were sent from.
This much I can say: you won’t be getting location updates from me. I don’t like to think of myself as paranoid - but why would I ever want to tip my hat about being away from home? I don’t care if it’s just for an hour or a long weekend.
I fully understand how, with advancements in mobile technology, comes interest in where people are as they update their social network status. After all, if I tell the world that I’m in downtown San Francisco and thinking about grabbing some lunch, there’s an opportunity for advertisers to push maybe a menu, discount coupons or walking directions to a nearby restaurant. In those I prefer pull technology over push. If I want to know which restaurants are nearby, I’ll log into my phone and search for that information.
As for today’s headlines, the New York Times cited anonymous sources who said Facebook is aiming for its developer’s conference next month to announce location services. The Times piece was thin on details and Facebook wasn’t confirming anything. What the sources did tell The Times, though, was that Facebook was planning to launch this service as an opt-in feature. Clearly, the site has learned its lesson from the backlash of other launches, such as Beacon.
As for Twitter, TechCrunch reports today that the company flipped the switch on geolocation on its site today, which allows users to hover over a location placeholder that turns blue and brings up a little Google map. The blog updated later that Twitter had turned the service off - but the settings on my Twitter account still had a checkbox to enable it.
Whether the site is just putting it through some tests or rolling it out, it’s probably safe to say that the geolocation feature will be coming soon.
Just don’t expect me to sign-up for any of them.
