How to Enable Location Updates in Twitter

The recent integration of location sharing by Twitter.com could become the beginning of a battle between privacy campaigners and social-networking site operators particularly as the New York Times reported, last week, that Facebook is considering the introduction of a similar geo-location service next month. However, Twitter appears to have anticipated and addressed some of the potential privacy issues by its own admission that not everyone would want to ”add their current location to a tweet” therefore the new location feature is turned off by default. In order to enable the location status tool, which is initially available to US users only, users will have to take the following steps;

1. From the Account Settings Page: tick check-box – “Add location information to my tweets” and save settings. Once the new setting has been saved, Twitter will be able to display your location information (such as neighbourhood, town or exact location) with your tweets. Note that the setting can also be disabled, to remove your location history and stored coordinates, in the same way from the account settings page.
2. The next step involves how to tweet your location on a per-tweet basis. To do this, simply click on the cross-hair icon that will now appear below your update box. This will prompt your Web browser to ask whether to “Remember location for this site”. Say Yes and tick the check-box to “Remember for this site” and then click on “Share location” to store the option. Once completed, your location can now be shared with everyone on a per-tweet basis.

Finally, Twitter does not guarantee those users, who, choose to delete or remove all location data from their tweets, after enabling the location service, that copies of information stored, on 3^rd-party applications will be removed.

Talking Point

Do you support the use of location-sharing services by social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter?