Twitter adds geolocation – so what…

Late today Biz announced that Twitter will be launching a new API that will include geolocation (latitude and longitude) information. I guess this is suppose to be the next big thing considering everyone and their brother is saying how important this stuff is.

Not sure how this geolocation information is suppose to work with Twitter? Well Biz provides the following example

For example, with accurate, tweet-level location data you could switch from reading the tweets of accounts you follow to reading tweets from anyone in your neighborhood or city—whether you follow them or not. It’s easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake. There will likely be many use cases we haven’t even thought of yet which is part of what makes this so exciting.

*Yawn*

Of course the social media mavens and big-shots are already salivating over the addition of geolocation to the API. For example Jeff Jarvis is full of ideas about how great this is.

* For news, it would be possible to verify that witnesses reporting what they see are where they say they are. Twitpics can be geotagged.

* Local news organizations should build apps to track surges of activity around any address. Could be a news event. Could be hipsters congregating (telling one where hippness happens).

* News orgs could also use it as a reporting tool: the fabled pothole report via Twitter.

* A hyperlocal blog could set up a feed of your neighbors’ tweets all around town.

* Over time, the geoTwitter enables what I’ve been thinking of as the annotation layer atop the real world: diners create simple reviews of a restaurant simply around location, anyone annotating any location.

* I wonder about the commercial applications: subscribing to tweet ads near me.

*Yawn*

I’m sorry but I’m just not feeling all the warm and fuzzy over all this geolocation love that everyone seems to have. Outside of a very small range of uses I don’t get why everyone is getting all excited over geolocation.

The idea that being able to let the world know where all those tweets are coming from right down to the degree is some sort of killer feature is ridiculous. As far as I can see this is more of a stalker’s dream than anything else.