Monday, May 5. 2008

Twisney - another step forward for mashups?

Some time ago I noted how the next step in mashups (after map mashup 1.0 - putting locations on a map) was sites making their own data. I typically pointed to Zillow as an example. And, you could add any site that included user generated or user corrected data, I suppose. This week I ran into a mashup that is another sort of next step for geospatial mashups: Twisney.com It's built off Twitter, Flickr and Virtual Earth and from that you can probably guess that it's a way to post real time pics/comments to a map of Walt Disney World.

Users send images (via Twitter or e-mail) and put a location/comment in the subject. The site extracts keywords for locations (there's a reference list, but most things you'd think of should work; if they don't real humans figure out the location) and posts the images 'in real time' on the map. By default no contact address/real name is used, but optionally it can be included. There's no registration to use the service, nor a this time, a business model.

A few things make this mashup interesting:

- limited geography
- keywords (not GPS, or any other location technology involved)
- basic e-mail works; more tech savvy folks can use Twitter
- Disney not involved (too bad for them; it'd be a neat addition for its marketing!)
- quick growth with almost no PR (I found one article dated Apr 25 as I write May 3)
- can you imagine this for say the ESRI user conference?

Big shout out to For Immediate Release for noting this app. Frankly, I'm learning more about social networking from that podcast than from just about anything I read. Kudos to Shell and Neville (they are the hosts).

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