#tweetsmart

Chapter 23. I Feel So Close To You Right Now

Tweet this Project

One feature of Twitter we haven’t much explored in this book is Twitter’s “location” function. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this feature, I’ll explain.

Big Brother never had it so easy. We, as a culture, have surrendered any privacy we had left for the fun of telling our friends and followers exactly where we are in every moment. We are our own paparazzi. The mobile phones in our pockets fire off public reports whenever we walk into our favorite coffee shop, bookstore, or house of ill-repute. (Just kidding! We turn off our phones before that happens.)

Location-based social platforms like FourSquare have turned this constant surveillance into a flashy game for us to play. And you may not know about it because they don’t promote it much, but Twitter also has integrated its own mobile location-tracking ability. You can, if you wish, attach your current location to your current tweet. You can also turn this feature off if you want to go about your day privately—but what fun would that be? Google’s satellites are watching us move about anyway, so let’s have fun with it, shall we?! #rant

This project uses Twitter’s location feature to keep your audience on its toes. I call this the “I feel so close to you right now” project. The premise is similar to the “Star in the Crowd” project, in that you’re out in the real world looking for other followers in the real world—but instead of meeting your followers face-to-face, ...