• Fast Company et al., Tuesday, June 15, 2010 1:23 PM

Twitter's location-based Places feature was first announced back in April, but going live, today, and industry watchers are taking notice. Now, "Twitter users can tag their posts with their precise location -- like Alcatraz or the Columbus Circle Whole Foods -- and people can search for all the posts written from a specific location," reports The New York Times' Bits blog.

Envisioning a sort of real-world Google AdSense, Bits adds: "Location information could potentially be used by marketers who want to reach shoppers in a competitor's store, for example, or people near a certain restaurant."

Of particular note, rather than going geo-targeted alone, Twitter also announced partnerships with location-based leaders Foursquare and Gowalla.

"If you click on a location that's associated with checkins from members of either one of those services, you'll see those updates in your Twitter stream as well," reports Fast Company. "This is great for Foursquare and Gowalla -- it opens them up to a huge field of Twitter users in a much more integrated way."

Still, "It will be interesting to see whether access to Twitter Places integration -- and the ability to see tweets from others in the same location -- makes users less likely over time to check in via Foursquare or Gowalla from those places," writes GigaOm. "And when Twitter rolls out its new Annotations platform, which will allow services to add metadata of various kinds to a tweet, it's possible that location-based tweets could be tagged as reviews of those places (if they were restaurants, for example), which would provide similar functionality to the tips users can provide in Foursquare and review services like Yelp."

The launch of Twitter Places "could also challenge Google's local dominance in some ways," according to Search Engine Journal. "The public may come to rely more on a Twitter Place page for an up-to-the-minute snapshot of a local business (complete with the latest tweets and check-ins), rather than a Google Place Page -- many of which often show reviews that are months or years old ... Businesses that tend to attract a lot of real-time conversation and check-ins may be as interested -- or more -- in using their Twitter Place page as a marketing tool than their Google Place Page."

Adds Search Engine Journal: The elephant in the room, of course, is Facebook ... It has a massive user base and plenty of local data about its users, plus a growing number of local businesses already marketing on its platform."

Twitter is also releasing an API, so developers will be able to integrate Twitter Places into their third-party apps. Meanwhile, Twitters own iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry apps will soon be getting Places integration.

Read the whole story at Fast Company et al. »