Twitter turns on geo-location feature

Twitter has activated its new location feature

Twitter turned on its new geo-location feature yesterday, although it is currently available only to some users.

If a user decides they want the location feature activated, a marker will appear next to their tweets. Hovering over the marker will bring up a map of the user's whereabouts.

Twitter was reported to have tested the new feature a few days ago on some accounts, but turned it off before the official launch.

The launch has been accompanied by a blog post from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

"A recent burst of interest in location sharing applications, games and services has many Twitter users excited about appending geographic data to some of their tweets," he said.

"People who choose to add this additional layer of context help make Twitter a richer information network for all of us. Location data can make tweets more useful."

The new feature is disabled by default for all Twitter users, but can be enabled from the Account Settings tab.

At the moment, the geo-tag appears to work only in Firefox browsers. Twitter could not immediately be reached for answers on whether the feature will work in other browsers and when all users will have access.

The feature has been unveiled after a surge in the popularity of services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Google Latitude. Facebook is also set to launch a new location service at its developer conference in April, according to reports.