Twitter location bugs show interesting twavels

Twitter succeeds sometimes in spite of itself.

I have promoted Twitter use among journalists on this blog and at conferences, seminars and, of course, on Twitter itself. So I make fun of Twitter not as one of those critics who don’t understand it and refuse to like it. I write as one who has tweeted more than 13,000 times, can’t picture myself without using Twitter and am occasionally amused or annoyed by its shortcomings.

But I gotta say: Twitter sucks at using location.

I’m sure the geniuses at Twitter (and I say that respectfully, not sarcastically) were quick to recognize the possibilities of location-based information and to see that Twitter could benefit greatly from location. Before Foursquare was even nationwide last year, Twitter introduced location features, which I activated (with the help of tweeps) when I was in Russia last year.

I don’t know whether location is really difficult to do or whether Foursquare’s location focus helps it master location better, but generally, if I can get a signal on my phone (iPhone, so I’m stuck with AT&T), Foursquare places me pretty close to my actual location. Twitter impressed me at first, showing where I was in St. Petersburg last December. But lately, it hasn’t done so well.

Twitter frequently places me miles away from my actual location and sometimes hours away. This happens whether I’m using my laptop, my iPhone or Mimi’s iPhone (I’m between phones right now, waiting for a replacement for a phone that couldn’t stand up to the salt-and-sand of a wayward wave at Rehoboth Beach, Del., last weekend).

My tweets from work get placed in various nearby neighborhoods, including Ashton Heights, Radnor-Fort Myer Heights (at least those are in Arlington) and across the river in Washington, as well as occasionally in the right place, North Rosslyn, Arlington, Va. Some other tweets have been located accurately, if not precisely: “Virginia, US,” though I also got that location once from Delaware.

Tweets from my home in Herndon, Va., frequently show up as coming from Hunter Mill, five miles away, and once wandered to Sully, seven miles off in another direction. (Update: When i tweeted a link to this blog post from home, Twitter said I was in Logan Circle in Washington, 25 miles away.)

My favorite flight-of-Twitter came on July 17. An hour and 23 minutes after Twitter located me accurately in Rehoboth Beach, it reported that I was in Lebanon, Ind. That was a pretty quick trip, but not as swift as my two-minute dash from Lebanon to Kingston, N.Y. I also allegedly visited East Nelson, Ill., Fallsburg, N.Y., and West Hartford, Conn., that weekend.

I seem to go to New York City a lot. I’m in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, today, and was in Midtown Center, Manhattan earlier in the week. Alas, the only time I was in the Bronx, my beloved Yankees were on the West Coast. Once I only made it as far as Jersey City. I should make it to Queens sometime soon.

I don’t expect Twitter to fix this any time soon. But I do have one request: Could your transporter beam send me somewhere I’d like to go? Perhaps Bryce Canyon (pictured in my blog header), Tofino, B.C., or to Minneapolis so I could visit my granddaughter?

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