MapTwits blog

MapTwits works in all types of mobile devices. No matter how old they are, if they can connect to the web they will work with MapTwits. No GPS or app are required. Just point your mobile browser to http://maptwits.com

The picture above shows how MapTwits looks in a number of devices (some new, some old, one of them is not even a phone): Nokia 6101, Apple iPhone, N810 Internet Tablet, Nokia N96 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

MapTwits is a very simple service that lets you share your location on Twitter.

There are a bunch of location services out there that work with Twitter and other social networks. We love services like foursquare, gypsii, brightkite and Google Latitude. However, we found that most of them have a number of problems that limit their mainstream adoption:

• Limited geographical reach (a lot of them only work in the US, or even only in some cities)
• You have to sign up for yet-another-account in yet-another-service. Sometimes even your friends have to sign up before they can see your location
• You need to download and install a mobile app in order to use the service on the go (that’s assuming you have a phone that is supported). Even then, your friends may not be able to access the service from their phones unless they also install the same apps or at least have a smartphone with a powerful web browser.
• You need to deal with a lot of complicated settings and terminology before you can start sharing your location

We decided to create MapTwits to lower the adoption barriers for location services: we wanted to target the causual user that is not necessarily interested in the latest gadgets or the latest technology. We like to think of MapTwits as the lowest common denominator of all location services.

If you want to share your location with MapTwits you DO NOT NEED to:

• have a fancy smartphone with a GPS
• create an account
• download or install any app
• link your  account with other services, you don’t need to search/invite your friends
• care about concepts like checking in, adding places/items, badges, hierarchies, points, etc

In order to share your location you just have to go to maptwits.com and sign in with your existing Twitter credentials. It works with any mobile phone that has a web browser and you can use it anywhere in the world.

Yes, MapTwits is bare bones basic. You simply search your location and tweet something about it. However, you can be sure that all your friends will be able to see the maps that you share, no matter if they don’t own a smartphone and no matter if they have never heard of MapTwits.

We’ll update this blog with some ideas and examples on how to use MapTwits on the go. We also have an API for developers that we’d like to talk about. More on that very soon. For now, have fun sharing your location and let us know what you think of the concept.

thanks,

the MapTwits team