Raffi, I find the biggest hurdle with geo-tweets right now is that very few twitter users actually have it enabled. And I believe for a very good reason as sending the exact coordinate of a tweet has serious privacy issues. For example, a girl takes a picture of her new hairdo from her bedroom and tweets it, but forgot she had geo-tagging set, some freak on the net decides to pay her a visit, scary stuff.
As that example suggests, these cases have to be handled with absolute care, but the downside of putting up so many barriers to enable geo- tweeting is it creates resistance for adoption. I feel that unless Twitter allows services to enable geo-tweeting on a neighbourhood scale via the API, then adoption will continually be low. Neighbourhood (or city) tagging isn't invasive, not anymore then what many users put in under their "location" bio. Are there any plans for a spectrum of security for geo-tagging on a coordinate / neighbourhood / city scale? Thanks. Peter On Mar 26, 5:11 pm, Raffi Krikorian <ra...@twitter.com> wrote: > hi bob. > > "soon" :P > > > > > > On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:06 PM, bob.hitching <b...@hitching.net> wrote: > > good stuff raffi, any further news on if/when the new <place> data > > will be exposed via the Search API? > > > cheers, bob > > > GeoMeme -http://www.geome.me- what's happening where? > > > On Mar 2, 12:44 pm, Raffi Krikorian <ra...@twitter.com> wrote: > > > hi all. > > > > i wanted to give you all a heads up on some big changes we're making to > > our > > > geo-tagging API. right now, you can post a status update along with a > > > latitude and longitude pair -- what we've jokingly referred to as > > > "geo-tweeting", is actually just a status update with a "where" in the > > form > > > of a coordinate attached to it. we're about to add a whole new layer of > > > context to that status update. > > > > our goal is to provide a few more options to API developers (and the > > users > > > they are servicing) through this contextual information. people, we > > find, > > > inherently want to talk about a "place". a place, for a lot of people, > > has > > > a name and is not a latitude and longitude pair. (37.78215, -122.40060), > > > for example, doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people -- but, "San > > Francisco, > > > CA, USA" does. we're also trying to help users who aren't comfortable > > > annotating their tweets with their exact coordinates, but, instead, are > > > really happy to say what city, or even neighborhood, they are in. > > > annotating your place with a name does that too. > > > > once our new additions to our geo infrastructure comes into place, > > > geo-tweets will get richer data. for example, a status object may look > > like > > > the following (abbreviated): > > > > { > > > "id":9505317221, > > > ... > > > "coordinates": { > > > "type":"Point", > > > "coordinates": [-122.40060, 37.78215] > > > }, > > > "place": { > > > "country":"United States", > > > "country_code":"US", > > > "full_name":"SoMa, San Francisco", > > > "name":"SoMa", > > > "place_type":"neighborhood", > > > "bounding_box": { > > > "type":"Polygon", > > > "coordinates": [ > > > [ > > > [ -122.42284884, 37.76893497 ], > > > [ -122.3964, 37.76893497 ], > > > [ -122.3964, 37.78752897 ], > > > [ -122.42284884, 37.78752897 ] > > > ] > > > ] > > > }, > > > "id":"7695dd2ec2f86f2b", > > > "url":"/1/geo/id/7695dd2ec2f86f2b.json" > > > }, > > > ... > > > "text":"Wherever you go, there you are." > > > > } > > > > here you'll see a new place attribute that gives the contextual location > > of > > > the geo-tweet itself. in these cases, you'll have rich, and > > human-readable, > > > information about where this tweet has come from -- in this case, SoMa, > > San > > > Francisco. the geo object, for the time being, is still there, so you > > don't > > > have to worry about backwards compatibility. it will soon be deprecated, > > > however and please plan for that. we're also introducing a > > > coordinatesobject which has the added bonus that, when in JSON, it is > > > properly GeoJSON > > > encoded with the longitude before latitude. > > > > to support this these changes we've added a few endpoints: > > >https://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-GET-geo-revers... > > > > you can call geo/reverse_geocode with a latitude and longitude, and it > > will > > > return an array of places that you can use to annotate your tweet with. > > > each place that is returned will have a unique ID that you can use, as > > well > > > as a displayable name, and even a geographical bounding box that you can > > use > > > for display on a map. if you want more details, then hit the > > > geo/idendpoint where, if available, and if you're interested, you can > > > retrieve a > > > more detailed geometry for more accurate map drawing. we've also updated > > > the statuses/update documentation ( > >https://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses%C2%A0...) > > > to indicate how to pass that place ID with your status update. > > > > for this first pass, we're only going live with United States-centric > > data, > > > but that will quickly be expanded geographically as we work out the kinks > > in > > > our system. there are definitely some nuances that i'm missing in this > > > e-mail, a few things are still in flux, but we're rapidly documenting > > this > > > on our wiki, and we hope to be going live with it quite soon. as always, > > if > > > you have any questions, just find us at @twitterapi, or drop us an > > e-mail. > > > > -- > > > Raffi Krikorian > > > Twitter Platform Teamhttp://twitter.com/raffi > > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to twitter-development-talk+ > > unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE > > ME" as the subject. > > -- > Raffi Krikorian > Twitter Platform Teamhttp://twitter.com/raffi -- To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
