This article first appeared on Vulcan Post.
Rumor has it that the once social networking powerhouses are set to team up on 2015 to power more location-based content.
An unnamed source told Business Insider that Twitter and Foursquare are partnering up next year to bring about more geo-based features to Twitter.
Although both companies have declined to comment more on the partnership, the collaboration is said to bring in similar features from Foursquare into Twitter and more. The new geo-based features will not only consists of the check-in feature but also highlight content from other users such as local recommendations.
This new feature may very well serve as a competition to sites such as HungryGoWhere and even Yik Yak.
But why the need for a collaboration?
Although Twitter already has a location-tagging feature in its site, its capabilities are limited to only telling your followers where you are or where you were at the point of the tweet. But with a collaboration with one of the biggest location driven networking site in the works, could it really give Twitter an edge?
A Twitter Executive also told Business Insider their goals and aims behind the collaboration.
“There are two key [location] components to nail: 1) Understanding where content is coming from and where the conversation is happening: a country, a city, a neighborhood or venue. 2) Understanding places you care about, whether that’s the place you’re standing when you access twitter, your home country, or some place else on the globe that’s captured your attention. Organizing the world’s public conversations in real-time can offer limitless opportunities.”
Although Foursquare has yet to comment on the partnership, Twitter seems to be more excited than their fellow partner.
Twitter recently held an analyst presentation to outline some of its plans to encompass the new location-based features into the current site. Twitter noted how better location data could improve its service. Perhaps including contextually relevant information to new users might even convince them to open up the Twitter app again, which is something social networking sites struggle to do – keeping their audience.
As numerous collaborations between big social networking sites roll out, it will be interesting to see how Twitter and Foursquare may take it to another level with this new vision of geo-based micro-blogging. We’ll just have to wait and see.
