What can Geo-Tweeting do for Indiana?

[Pat Coyle]

TechCrunch - Twitter is on the verge of rolling out its Geolocation API (actually, it’s already partially rolled out). That feature should be a boon to location-based services which can now send their location information back to Twitter and vice versa. But these locations will just be coordinates, it won’t be like Foursquare or Gowalla where you check in to actual places to tag your location. A new group aims to merge the ideas.

HashCeratops (yes, that’s really the name) is a group being led by Buzzd, the service that finds hot places in cities based on other location services. One main feed Buzzd looks to for its data is the Twitter stream. The problem is that without a standard for naming locations, it can be hard to parse tweets to find out exactly where people are. Hence, HashCeratops.

How will this technology be applied in Indiana?
We see a lot of Smoosiers already using these location based services on Twitter. Would any of you bleeding edgers like to explain what you see in these services?

What new breakthroughs in entertainment, business, community or tourism apps do you see emerging now that geography and Twitter are linked?
Share your thoughts here

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[Pat Coyle]

So what do you think of this HashCertaTops?

[Bob Burchfield]

So essentially they are trying to position themselves as a clearinghouse for naming hashtags? It seems like ANY company would have an awfully hard time fulfilling this role or purpose for the populace at large. I think they've got their work cut out for them to move beyond a niche to nationwide (or worldwide) recognition. But hey: you get the right publicity in the right place, and anything could happen.

[Amy Stark]

HashCeratops is like a sub-group of buzzd which is all about finding hot spots in cities within a certain area. Let's say you're visiting NYC and you are at the corner of 44th and 9th and want to know the hot places within walking distance. You would check into buzzd and give your coordinates - at least that is my interpretation.

HashCeraTops is trying to standardize geo-hashtags so that it can feed the information correctly to buzzd

Hashtags are a tough nut to crack, as Bob points out. Organizations can state an event or place has a certain hashtag, but it doesn't always stick. It's important to keep the hashtag simple, easy to spell to lower the risk of typos, and introduce it early to as many influential sneezers as possible so it becomes the only one. e.g. The brickyard 400's official hashtag was #AS400 (AS is AllState the sponsor) and yet #brickyard400 was also floating around spontaneously generated from users.

[Thomas Ho]

See IF this helps you. I linked to it from my blog.

[Amy Stark]

@Pat .. I put a tweet out to foursquare earlier so they may try to connect and answer your questions via twitter. How often to you check your @sports20 account?

@DrHo If @foursquare is worth their salt, they will follow my advice and sign up to Smaller Indiana and reach out to Pat directly.

[Pat Coyle]

@ Amy, I check Twitter daily. I haven't heard anything yet. Thanks!