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A Guide to Location Sharing on Twitter

by Carolyn · 0 comments

To compete with services such as Foursquare, Twitter has recently released a targeted location sharing feature. This feature is called “Tweet With Your Location”, and is similar to other location sharing services. Here’s a quick guide to this feature, its potential advantages and disadvantages, as well as how you can protect your privacy.

How it Works

When you have the “Tweet With Your Location” feature enabled, every tweet you make will be tagged to your geographical location. This means that any twitter user can mouse over your tweet, and a pop-up map will pinpoint exactly from where you made your tweet. There are two choices: you can either have your general neighborhood be tagged to the tweet, or your geographical location. The neighborhood sharing feature is slightly more broad, since it only allows your general area to be attached to your tweets. Once you attach your location to a tweet, Twitter will store this information. To delete the location information from your past tweets, there is an option under your Settings > Account page.

This is what it looks like when you allow Twitter to attach your exact location to your tweets.

Advantages of Location Sharing

Sharing your physical location has recently become very popular among social network users. For example, if you are a club in Orlando, you have the ability to see who else from your Twitter friends is also at the same club. You can also search for tweets of random people who are currently there, which could range from “That DJ’s hair is awesome!” to “I wouldn’t recommend the sushi here”. This gives you a real-time stream of information about any given location.

Another potentially useful example would be checking tweets of people currently at a popular restaurant. With a few quick searches, you can see if there’s a long wait for a table, or if you can sneak in right before the dinner rush. This is a huge bonus in convenience.

When trying to network with a large group of people (such as if you are attending a live concert or a business conference), this feature could also give you real-time updates on where everyone is. Instead of asking everyone how long before they’ll reach the venue, you can check the location of their tweets.

“A recent burst of interest in location sharing applications, games, and services has many Twitter users excited about appending geographic data to some of their tweets” – Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Disadvantages of Location Sharing

Any time that you allow people to search for your personal schedule by using the internet, you are putting yourself at risk. For example, if you check in at a location several hours from home, a burglar can use this information to assume that your house will be unoccupied until you return. You may remember that filmmaker Israel Hyman was robbed, which was supposedly connected to a tweet that he made advertising that he was on vacation with his family in Kansas City. The website titled “Please Rob Me!” highlights how easy it really is for a burglar to discover empty homes in their area.

Reactions to Twitter’s location sharing feature have been mostly negative. Here are a few reactions taken from Twitter users about their opinions on location sharing:

“I know I’m paranoid but NO, I don’t want 2 tweet my location. Tweeting a million strangers where I am goes against my survival instinct.”- Twitter User Zazochi

“I turn it (Location Sharing) off, not like I have anything to steal at my current location, but you can never be too careful.”- Twitter User TinPanAlley

“…married with 2 daughters. Worries me, ladies announcing their schedule over and over. Makes it easy 4 predators.” – Twitter User lunarwrase

“Location sharing is fine if you want everyone to know where you are but if you respect any of your common rights, like privacy..it is unwise to share your location at all times.” – Twitter User Mighty_Lark

“I don’t use geo tracking, the less people know about me the better, too much information on the Internet already.”- Twitter User kyonkun

“Twitter Location Sharing is a great feature if used correctly but I still prefer FourSquare for better overall control/Privacy ”- Twitter User SpazWuzHere

Another disadvantage of location sharing (which applies more to women) is that it allows for extensive “stalking”. By constantly updating your location, you give people an idea of your weekly schedule, which means that a potential stalker could know when and where they could find you.

Protecting Your Privacy

By default, this location sharing feature is off in a user’s Twitter settings. To enable it, a user has to manually activate it by choosing the opt-in setting. If you do not want to share your location with your tweets, you can keep this feature off, and activate it later if you change your mind. To check to see if you have this feature enabled, navigate to:

Settings > Account

Then, look at the setting for “Tweet Location“. If the “Add a Location to your Tweets” box is checked, you are sharing this information. If not, your tweets will remain location-free.

As with any location sharing feature, it’s important to be very aware of what type of information that you share with the internet community. If your tweets are not protected, this means that they are visible even to people who aren’t following you. If you have any concerns about sharing your location being a security risk, you may want to double check to make sure that you aren’t sharing your location via Twitter.