Geolocating tweets
 

Serious question. This came up at work.

Is there a way to identify where a particular tweet came from?

I know that the tweet is identified by an account address.

But if someone tweets "hey there is a fire over here" is there a way to determine where (geolocation) this tweet came from? And if so, to what accuracy?

I don't tweet so I have no personal insight in to it.

I know that there is a new feature that allows users to opt-in to a voluntary geolocation. We were talking about before this option.

Hmm....at work you should work and not think, :DL

But my work is thinking.

Somehow I got past the hiring process and was in! :up:

But this is a serious question. During the last elections in Iran, a lot of emphasis was placed on tweets. We are working up a scenario where tweets can be used to manipulate events (especially if people consider that a tweet = truth)

One hypothesis we are looking at is people outside Iran influencing events inside by sending tweets where the account originates in Iran but the twit is outside Iran.

Aside from grabbing the IP associated with the account I don't believe there is a way.

Regarding retrieving said info, there's an interesting legal row in the UK over this very subject at the moment.

That is what we were concluding too. And the IP would only give you the location of the account, not where the actual tweet came from.

I just wanted to bounce it off some tweeters here. Few of us at work tweet. :nope:

maybe this:http://www.twitterlocal.net/
or this: http://millionclues.com/reviews/webs...tion-and-time/

otherwise you will have to try your hand at data mining, trying to figure out someone's location through what they reference in their tweets, and their time zones.

Thanks for the links.

Of course the next question we will be investigating is how easy would it be to fake your location with twitter.

Sometimes we research cool stuff at work. Not often, but sometimes. :03:

Sounds to me as if you're working at the Ministry of Truth for Big Brother :O:

You might want to be careful with topics like this one with the increase in recent conspiracy posts here the last weeks :haha:

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:har:

Sorry, could not keep a straight face on that one.

Probably the same way kids get around web filters and firewalls in schools: Proxies and other stuff (such as TOR or UltraSurf) will disguise your location and tunnel right through a filter or firewall.

Yup, if a tweet is send via web, you have no real evidence to identify the originator's location.

If a tweet is send via SMS, Twitter should be able to name the provider through which it was send. I doubt that Twitter would give away the name for any other reasons than criminal prosecution. To be 100% sure, you must also have the SMS provider's data and triangulate the position of the phone.

Note that not all countries provide the possibility to twitter via SMS, Iran for example is not on the list. http://support.twitter.com/articles/...e-or-long-code