Twitter needs geo tools (location filtering)

The twitter conversation below occurred this morning. I’m very sympathetic to Stephen’s complaint, and often don’t post stuff because the content is geo-limited or time-limited. If Stephen hadn’t complained, I wouldn’t have been prodded into offering a possible solution. It’s up to the geniuses who design these services to decide when to adopt @ or officially allow a feature such as described below.

I was much more vocal about my disappointment in twitter when pr0n-sters and spammers were winning the battle. I applaud twitter for progress in that area, and I would do some digging to offer old tweets, especially one where I really lost my temper. I would do that, but access to older tweets is still unavailable. Try searching your own tweets; they have still not fixed search. My point is… lost now.

Notes: “geo” is short for geographical, or “location-based.” Twitter here is shorthand for whatever micro-messaging platform wins, with @ (at-replies) and # (hashtags) being just one example of how to express such things. Unstated in the conversation is that there is no way for me to geo-limit my sphere of interest, or geo-limit the sphere of single tweet. In my profile, I could say I’m interested in #usaonly and any tweet could limit its sphere appropriately. In this case, I would add #usaonly to all Netflix ad Hulu tweets, and Stephen wouldn’t see them if he said he was interested in #canadaonly. Geo-unlimited tweets and profiles act as they do currently. Each image linked to its tweet.

 

A more expressive dialect is to either #include #usaonly (inside joke for all C and C++ programmers there) or #exclude #usaonly. This allows Stephen to register his disgust with all Hulu tweets by saying #exclude #usaonly, rather than artificially limit his sphere of interest to #canadaonly.

#canadaonly should not be needed, since Stephen is not only interested in Canadian issues… he is merely tired of being notified of content that he cannot access. I will not address the question of whether geo-limiting content is wise; it’s a very unfortunate fact.