Using Twitter Location – Where Are You?

Not too long ago everyone on twitter was showing their support for Iran by changing their location. There were a variety of reasons I heard of for changing your location to Tehran, but I never did. I think accurately representing your location in your twitter profile is more important than people think.

As you can see from my graphic above, people set their locations to a variety of different uses. Some people are very specific and providing city, state and zip for their location. Others just provide a city. Some people put the name of a business in their location. In many cases if you use twitter from your iPhone it will grab your GPS coordinates and use that to specify your location.

Regardless of what you set your location to, realize there’s a very valid use for being accurate with that location. I will frequently look for people to follow based on their location. I want to hear from people that live in the same city as I do. It’s a way to keep tabs on what’s going on around me.

The other use is that sometimes people could be looking for knowledgeable users in specific industries or a variety of skill sets. You could be losing business opportunities by not being identified as located in the city people may be searching for some help.