With Biz Stone’s announcement that Twitter is gearing up to launch a new API that will make the service truly location-aware, the door is now opening for a value proposition on real-time search.
The payoff of being able to supply a real-time message/offer to a real-time customer is quite enticing. As Meghan Keane correctly points out in a post on the Econsultancy blog, “an effective search engine” is at the core to making location important for brands. How it plays out for the user experience will be no less critical.
It is not hard to imagine firing off a tweet from your iPhone regarding options for lunch. As such you might be looking to crowd source from your friends an opinion, but that does not mean you are looking for a half-dozen Google-like paid search results. Frankly that would look awful on a mobile device and just be obnoxious to a user. Still some among us would not be shy to click on an Admob-type overlay offering a coupon, perhaps tilting your decision making process. The overlay could just as easily have a “see more” click function that would pull up additional messages. At the end of the day it gives some utility to the user, no different than Google paid search and perhaps far more relevant.
The current focus is on the API being open to platform developers prior to availability on the web interface of Twitter or its mobile site, as per Biz’s blog post. This in and of itself creates an interesting business opportunity for developers of applications such as Tweetie or Twitterfon. Integration of services that would allow for geo-location ad serving could with scale drive a worthwhile revenue stream. At very least, in the short-term, if I am tweeting with hunger from my seat at Citi Field, Shake Shack might get me to stand in a long line with a well timed message.
