Twitter takes big step into location-aware future

Twitter has acquired Mixer Labs, the creator of GeoAPI, which provides several services for location-aware applications like Foursquare and BirdFeed. “We’ll be working to combine the contextual relevance of location to tweets,” explains Twitter’s Ev Williams. “We want to know ‘What’s happening?’, and more precisely, ‘Where is it happening?’ As a dramatic example, twittering ‘Earthquake!’ alone is not as informative as ‘Earthquake!’ coupled with your current location,” he explains.

Twitter recently launched geotagging functionality, and the addition of Mixer Labs gives Twitter a big boost a rapidly-expanding space.