I noticed something interesting tonight. In the new build of Tweetie 2 (not out yet), a bunch of little red location markers started appearing next to tweets in my stream. Knowing that this new version was built using Twitter’s new Geolocation APIs, I inquired if this mean they had been turned on. Sure enough, they have, developer Loren Brichter just confirmed after talking to Twitter.
But there’s a slight problem. Apparently, the reason these geotags are showing up for all tweets (even those not actually geotagged) is that the documentation was a little unclear on how to handle non-geotagged tweets, Brichter says. The result is that every single tweet is tagged with a location somewhere just off the coast of Africa, south of Ghana. Either this is Atlantis, the Island from Lost, or we have a problem. [Update on the location below]
Brichter is aware of the issue and has already resolved it, and has resubmitted Tweetie 2 to the App Store for approval. Since no one officially has Tweetie 2 yet, this probably doesn’t affect you at all. But you have to wonder if other Twitter app developers were confused by this as well. If so, we could see a lot of apps with some wonky geolocation data.
Twitter hasn’t yet responded to my request for more information. It’s not clear if they meant to turn this on tonight. We do know that they had originally planned to launch it last week at the Twitter Conference in LA, but it wasn’t quite ready yet.
Earlier today, Twitter announced the new Lists feature, which will also feature an API. And of course, everyone is waiting for the Retweet API as well.
Update: As our apparently geography major readers have informed me, the area just off the coast of Ghana is lat/long 0,0. This makes sense — there is no location data attached to these tweets, so apparently they default to 0,0.
The place off the coast of Africa is the place where the Equator and Prime Meridian meet, or 0,0.
quite right.
Pretty sure that’s 0 degrees lat/long, not Atlantis.
+0
I see what you did there.
*golf clap*
*+10 claps*
You just kind of ruined it
“Just off the coast of Africa”? How about “at the intersection of the Equator and the Prime Meridian?
#GeographyAwarenessFAIL
The location south of Africa is also known as 0,0 in lat long. http://bit.ly/Ta91a
That makes sense.
That location is 0 degrees in latitude and 0 degrees in longitude.
I think it’s 0,0 … not sure though.
its 0, 0 which i didnt know but since everyone else said it , i had to joined the club
All of you, shut up. I WANT TO BELIEVE IT IS ATALANTIS.
i wanted to believe it was the Island from Lost. Of course it’s not in the south pacific…
did you mean the South Atlantic?
I have no idea why you people are fighting about which place it is. You’re missing the point, ain’t you?
“Knowing that this new version was built using Twitter’s new Geolocation APIs, I inquired if this meant they had been turned on.”
These people get turned on by building new twitter apps? Talk about twitter hype!
(sorry, cudn’t help it…in a ’screw-around’ mood this morining:P)
Why can’t Atlantis be located at 0,0. ?
Sounds plausible to me.
Ridiculous Twitter Funding = `$155m
Real Twitter Value = 0,0
I’m interested to know whether you can actually tweet from that location. I’m sure that it’s unlikely that you will be able to but after the Google goat roadtrip I feel that MG Siegler should travel to ‘Devils Rifle’ and see if it’s possible!!
There is a very small, relatively unknown, island pretty close to that spot. Though it’s a bit closer to the Western shore of Africa, maybe 100km East of 0,0. Just a guess though. It’s a notable place b/c it’s the only place in all of Africa that speaks Spanish.
We’re not lost – we’re on Zero Zero Island!
thats stupid. now everyone is gonna look like they have location. when only a few do.
Actually I’d go as far as to say it’s actually Tweeties code that’s bugged.
In the home_timeline the new GeoLocation tags are EMPTY i.e.
If they have geo data then you have a
with an embedded
tag containing map coordinates.
Now Twitter might have changed this since last night, but I’ve actually been coding for this today so I know this is whats happening right now
Tags taken out
It should be an empty ‘geo’ tag at the moment. If there is valid geo data it contains a ‘geo’ tag containing a ‘point’ element.
None of the tweets I’ve seen so far contain any ‘point’ elements at all.
can’t wait to use Tweetie 2 … looks awesome.
I wonder if when they fix it, someone is at the location 0,0 wouldn’t have their geolocation information show up….that would be unfair on them.
The Twitter API is not completely live yet. You can pass geodata to twitter, but for it to be retained in the tweet and not discarded, the user has to opt in. I can’t find where that has been turned on yet. Here is a list of some other problems with twitter’s geodata api: http://bit.ly/info/kCv44
Thanks for the link. Strange thing about it, it deposited me in my bit.ly account where I believe I was viewing your CTs for this link (btw – you now have 6). Tried it twice ad same thing happened. Had to click from my bit.ly account to actually get to your page. bizarre.
Jim,
Sorry about that you are right. Here is the correct link:
http://bit.ly/kCv44
Has Twitter actually released the geolocation APIs to developers? Anyone have a link? I came across this.. http://apiwiki....cation&sp=1
This is actually bad coding, aka a BUG.
If the value is empty, 0,0 or NULL, it should have been ignored and not mapped as LatLong 0,0 as it’s in the middle of nowhere.
As a Software QA it amuses me to see how code isn’t tested out there, and patched after the fact.
Jack’s awesome.
Sounds promising. Really looking forward to it. And btw. – thanks’ for the “Update”. This solved a big mistery. Was wondering for a long time about those visitors of my website who obviously seemed to be aboard a ship…