The previously announced partnership between Twitter and Foursquare is beginning to bear its fruits. Aside from the basic location tag integration, the location feed feature is now getting rolled out for iOS with other platforms to follow.
While this seems to be big news, Twitter has yet to make an official announcement regarding the new feature implementation. The confirmation regarding the silent rollout came from Jeff Glueck, Foursquare CEO.
"We're excited about this integration, which has been getting deeper over time. Location can provide important context for any moment, and our location intelligence is best-in-class. We're proud to support Twitter in the U.S., Canada, Brazil and many other geographies," Glueck told Techcrunch. "Stay tuned for more to come."
Note that location tags on the micro-blogging portal has existed for quite a while now. News of the partnership broke out before 2014 ended. However, the deal between Foursquare and Twitter was only publicly announced in March 2015.
Coming soon! We're working with @foursquare so you can tag specific locations in Tweets: https://t.co/MwlLz5Pfvq pic.twitter.com/jATzXvbuV6
— Twitter (@twitter) March 23, 2015
With location feed, users can now monitor tweets coming from a specific area — be it a business headquarters, a tourist spot, a local park, a restaurant, an event or any point of interest. This new feature provides another dimension in terms of bringing people together and identify the parties that are in the same event or location. However, navigating to get to the location feed timeline can be a bit of a hassle.
Unlike hashtags, which only requires a simple click or tap to bring about related tweets, users first need to tap on a tweet and wait for the details page to pop up. Provided that the location was tagged, a linked location should be in the details page. Only after tapping the linked location will tweets and media from the concerned location be populated.
Aside from the Foursquare branding, the location feed timeline also gives the option to view details using the Foursquare app. Sourcing specific landmarks from the search and discovery service app is also mentioned within Twitter's support page. For places where Foursquare listings are scarce, Twitter has reportedly enlisted Yelp's database to provide specific location listings.
However, reports also suggest that the location feed feature has no restrictions and that users can tag their tweets with places that aren't even near them. Anyone can virtually be anywhere.
Of course, this isn't really an issue for those that do not want to broadcast their locations and keep it private. By tapping the location marker on the tweet compose box, a drop-down list that has the option of turning off the location service should appear.
