Finally Twitter will let you see tweets from a specific place, like a business, sports stadium, or music festival. After a reader tipped us off, Twitter confirmed to TechCrunch it’s now rolling out this big new location feature to all iOS users, with other platforms coming later.
Location feeds could inspire people to tweet more while out and about, fuel Moments about particular places, and improve Twitter’s ad targeting data. Better location functionality could be an important building block for Twitter’s future products and revenue potential.
Foursquare is powering precise place identification for the Twitter feature. In exchange it gets prominent branding, links back, and the ability to improve its own database.
Following renewed interest in location from Twitter’s role tracking the Ferguson #blacklivesmatter unrest, Business Insider reported in late 2014 Twitter and Foursquare would strike a partnership. The two officially announced the deal in March 2015, and previewed a prototype of the feature.
But underscoring Twitter’s trouble getting products out the door, specific location feeds are only rolling out now, 15 months later. TechCrunch reader Carlos Gil (TheCarlosGil on Snapchat), gave us the heads up.
Now when you tap a specifically location (powered by Foursquare) or a city tagged in a tweet, you’ll be brought to a new location feed with a map up top. There you’ll see a tab of tweets from that place or city, with the option to check tab dedicated to media such as photo from there.
Getting to these location feeds can be a bit tricky. City-level location, which many users leave on all the time, isn’t shown on tweets in the main timeline or profiles. You have to click into a tweet’s detail view to see it, then click on the city name to see its feed.
Specific location tags will show up inside tweets on mobile as “- at [the location]”. But tapping them brings up a un-stylized list of recent tweets also tagged there. You’ll have to tap into one of the tweet’s detail view and then on the location in blue beneath the tweet to pull up the new Foursquare location feed.
There’s currently no easy way to Twitter Search for location feeds.
