Tweets local?

Find myself concerned about Twitter again, and started pondering where I think there is a problem with more people signing up to be on the platform and I think it's simple: plenty of people are hesitant about potentially talking to the planet.

And yeah an awesome strength of Twitter is that a public tweet can bounce around the world but what if that causes caution in plenty of people? Then they can sign up, yeah, but without tweeting themselves are likely to feel left out. And also Twitter relentlessly reminds you of your follower count, which is another subject, but not tweeting? Where is it likely to go?

So occurred to me quickly, wouldn't it be cool if there were an option for tweets to just be local?

And I'm brainstorming here, with just thoughts as a fan of Twitter, tossing things out on my blog. Does not matter for me if taken seriously or not. But if are? Cool.

But like, say you had to have location on, which is the one problem with this idea, and tweets tagged to a location, like say New York City, would only be shown by the Twitter platform to people IN that location? So like from San Francisco you couldn't see those tweets at all.

And you couldn't see them if you didn't give your location which is my one concern with this idea as I brainstorm it out. But you can cut on location to SEE such tweets if you arrive some place and cut it off, when you leave or just don't want to see those tweets.

So these would be special location specific tweets, while public ones would be just the same.

And of course there would be the caution that the tweets could still be potentially seen outside a location as people could figure out ways to share them but that the platform would only show them location specific.

So the Twitter platform would behave a certain way with them, and guess they couldn't be shared like public tweets which is another problem. Like no retweets except to local? But people can't see them to retweet them anyway. Or even if retweeted only would show local? Yeah that makes sense. So even if retweeted, for someone outside the locale they just wouldn't even show. The platform would just check: is user in location? If yes, show. If not, do not show.

You could do it by city or region maybe. It could even be user controlled though don't know how heavy of a coding task and infrastructure load that might be. But like if you could tweet local to even a small city, or town, that could be a powerful feature, where people could chatter away for just their location with a reasonable expectation that others were unlikely to see!

And I think LOTS more people would sign up. Actually tweet, without worrying about talking to the planet, and even build decent follower counts within their locale.

Public tweets can be a BIG deal. Twitter should recognize that reality. And maybe give people more options to limit their exposure?

Just a thought. But yeah I think it could be cool. Like you arrive in San Francisco, cut on local tweets, and walk into conversations just within the City, which you can't see until you get there. Could be like a welcome home.

And decided to brainstorm this post which means limited editing. Oh, so better go back and read through a couple of times before I post. Limited editing done. Throwing out there.


James Harris