Twitter to support location-based trends with new API

Twitter is adding what could become a powerful new source for news and things to do. The company is going to support location-based trends with a new application programming interface so that users can see what others nearby are tweeting about. That could make mash-ups like the one pictured above from Trendsmap quite powerful. (Trendsmap shows the most buzzed-about terms on Twitter for different cities around the world.)

Raffi Krikorian of Twitter’s Platform Team writes:

The one feature request that we’ve heard over and over, however, is “what’s going on where I am?” To answer that, we wanted to give you all a heads up regarding the new “Trends API” that we’re launching. This API will open up trending information that is specific to a number of locations around the world.

Twitter’s using Yahoo’s Where on Earth IDs (WOEIDs) to name locations because the company’s markers are language-agnostic and stable. Based on the company’s documentation, it looks like the API will return 10 trending terms for a given location.