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.
The idea is to create a community-driven database of hashtags for various places in various cities. So, for example, if I’m going to the local cafe Epicenter, I might use #epicenter to say where I am. (You can submit requests for formally make place hashtags on HashCeratops’ site.) Of course, if it’s just one service doing this, the likelihood that it will take off is pretty small. But Buzzd has a number of partners on board including Coovents, Geodelic, Xtreme Labs, Yipit, and SocialGreat.
SocialGreat is an interesting partner in particular in that it does something similar to Buzzd. It uses data from places such as Foursquare, Twitter, and Brightkite to determine trending places in cities. Despite the similarities, it’s clear that the need for a place standard in on the minds of many of these companies. (It’s also worth noting the one of the creators of SocialGreat, Jon Steinberg, just joined Polaris Ventures as an Executive in Residence.)
Buzzd says it has already started using these place hashtags in elements it sends back to Twitter. Expect the others to shortly. They’re also looking for more partners. Find out more here.
Below, find the best practices for the hashtags HashCeratops is looking for.
Of course, this system will fail miserably if there are two places in the world named “Epicenter.” Telling people the “best practice” about unique hashtags won’t work. People don’t want to work that hard for no reward.
That’s why hashtags suck. A labeling system without a hierarchy or an editor is going to choke on namespace collisions. (Not to mention the opposite problem — people creating multiple tags for the same thing.)
Any startup that’s built on a bad idea like hashtags might as well hang up a the “Going out of business” sign NOW.
Also, somebody needs to tell HashCeratops that “monacle” isn’t actually a word.
http://twillage.com could use these as well to precisely place local events inside a city (e.g. “happy hours”, but once we have geolocated tweets, it should be relatively easy to mashup against Yellow Pages or Google Local to extract the name of the business that was mentioned in the tweet, no?
No. First, the imprecision thing, then the typo thing, then if it survives that, oh – a whole mountain of relatively easy mashup to do. For whom? This is amazing that people can’t think it through. Much as the Buzzd guys are great, the lesson is abundantly obvious: nobody finds a place that is buzzing, then instinctively pulls out a phone, starts a mobile app then types a timely note to no one in particular reporting a hot time in a loud jostling crowd. It’s just a note, but it’s proven nobody – let alone hoards of scenesters in every city every night – is driving content in that business model. So now, more keying? on twitter? that has to be distilled? Stop now please. Keep thinking. Something will come.
This name is so full of win. Prehistoric win.
AWESOME name and logo!!