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Can you find Twitter users by geographic location?

Hey, Dave! Is there any way to find people that twitter in a local area - like your buds in Colorado? I'd love to find someone to have coffee with occasionally here in Key West.


Dave's Answer:

You're right to suspect that in my home town, Boulder, Colorado, there are a scary number of people who are using Twitter and are veritable social butterflies, myself among them. In a rather remarkable way, the group coalesces at local cafes for spontaneous meetups or, as we call them, "tweetups", then everyone wanders off into their own world.

This works because we have already created the network through our own social groups and because of terrific local events like Boulder Open Coffee and Brainjam, but even without those, it turns out that you can search the profiles of Twitter users for geographic keywords.

For example, the site underwent a subtle redesign recently and the very top of your web-based Twitter home page looks like this now:

Searching by Name or Location on Twitter.com

I type in "Boulder" and get 392 matches. That's pretty darn good considering that this is a small college town and that the only matches are those from people who self-identify with the word "Boulder" in their profile or description!

At this point, be discerning and notice that some people update with some frequency (and some have no life and just Twitter, but we won't talk about that) while others, well, check this out:

Inactive profile - Cashalot - on Twitter.com

Dmitry might be a terrific chap, but he's not worth following on Twitter when his last Tweet was 11 months ago. He's not going to meet me for coffee, needless to say.

You can also use Google for these sort of searches. Try searching for "Boulder twitter" and see what comes up (or your home town instead, of course).

Finally, the best way to find other people who twitter is to make it widely known that you're sucked into the vortex yourself: activity breeds followers. So add something to your business card, put something on your company home page, or even etch some coconuts for exotic drinks at the local bar, hire a skywriter, whatever.

Or do what I do: write about Twitter then make sure to include a link to your Twitter profile hoping people will follow you, or at least realize that this site has lots of Twitter help. :-)



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Comments

Sadly, I cant find anyone of interest (and hardly anyone at all!) within 60 miles of me lol...

Great post though - had me searching ;)

Posted by: Lynn Terry at April 11, 2008 8:56 AM

Dave -- Coupla of extra things here:

1) There's a cool app called Twittermap (http://http://twittermap.com) that lets you plug in a zip code or place name, and it'll pull up a map of tweets from that location.

2) Any locative functions on Twitter depends on people updating their location at least periodically. Here's how you do that: http://twittermap.com/maps/faq.html

- Amy Gahran

Posted by: Amy Gahran at April 13, 2008 10:56 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!









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