It’s not clear why anyone would want to do this but it’s interesting nonetheless. Stweet, aside from making those who speak its name sound like an infant, is a mashup of Google Maps and Twitter enabled by TwitterFon, an iPhone and iPod Touch application.
The mashup shows not only where people are tweeting from at that moment, but uses Google Maps Street View to show that exact location. For example, in Murdokland of Lexington, Ky., you can see caseymiller tell tracie marie something looks gangrenous at 320 Larch Lane.
The number of geolocated tweets emanating from Lexington are few and far between, but in San Francisco, New York, and London (among a number of other very large cities), there’s a lot of traceable tweeting going on.
At a recent concert I attended, a group of young ladies whose collective chatter behind me resembled that of a pod of dolphins talked about everything but the musician. One of them, with a voice like a young Fran Drescher, explained to the girl next her: “Twitter is something that lets you tell rapists exactly where you are.”
Had she tweeted that from her iPhone, with Twitterfon’s location feature enabled, her antagonists would know she’d likely be walking down this street afterward.
For those without bad intentions, though, Stweet provides some voyeuristic fun so long as there are people in the world who actually want others to know where they are at all times.
